Old Powder Man

by Joan Williams

  A flapping of heelless shoes in the otherwise silent room was her leavetaking. At Son’s table they sighed and Red spoke for them all: “I’m proud of you, boy.” Other men leaving the dining room slapped Son on the shoulder, meaning the same. At midnight, Will and Red went to bed. Son, Winston, Buzz put on pajamas and ordered ice. Son felt so good he tipped the boy a dollar and suddenly, with a whoop, fell on the bed and they were all laughing. Winston said he didn’t even know what it was all about; he just never would forget it. Buzz told the story and Winston said, Hell, Son couldn’t hit anybody that hard.

  “Oh yeah,” Son said. “You want to find out?”

  “Now wait a minute,” Buzz said.

  “Naw,” Winston said, “but I’ll wrestle you. I wrestled a bear once and won.”

  “Hell you say,” Son said; he bent, hands before him and waited.

  Winston, as if from ropes, came forward, pushing his cot aside. “Listen here,” Buzz said.

  “Don’t worry, old man, it’s just a friendly wrestle,” Son said. Clutching one another, they went around, bumping furniture. As if on signal, they stopped, went to separate corners, breathing heavily, sweating. Again, by silent signal they met, locked, went around, grunting. Once they stopped for Son to tie his pajamas and started again. Taking a blanket, Buzz left to make a pallet on the floor in Will’s room. Entering, he said, “Them two’s crazy as coots,” and needed no other explanation. He slept wondering how long they would go on and found out at breakfast the next morning when a man stopped by the table to ask Son what the hell he was doing shoving the furniture around till three o’clock in the morning.

  Son spent the day visiting from room to room, meeting new people, looking at exhibits, talking about dynamite. Dynamite: he guessed he could talk about it all day. With pleasure he discussed jobs he had done and with pleasure almost as equal another fellow’s job, the way the dirt had blown and what kind it was, the kind of job a man had afterward, what price he had had to pay. How much dynamite had been used? he would ask. Son had a joking good-natured way among men but was serious saying he could save a man money by shooting dynamite himself, free. Contractors had to listen. Dynamiting, dirt, all their possible conditions were getting to be as familiar to Son as the face he shaved each morning. Just hearing about a job, he could say pretty much how it ought to be done. When he was working, he did not drink but made up for it at night. Late the second afternoon Winston, feeling no pain, insisted on going to a gambling boat tied up at the river. It was an old paddlewheeler strung with colored lights and had a machine gun mounted on the front. “Not for any joke either,” Winston said, stumbling down the gangplank. Below, he went straight to a wheel Son learned was roulette; but he was not interested in any of that fancy stuff. He joined a crap table and every few minutes a waiter at his elbow asked if he wanted a drink and he bought. He got hot on those dice; then the shoe was on the other foot; the house was buying him drinks. Every time he turned around a waiter said, Compliments. It was only later he realized that when the dice got fuzzy was when he began to lose. But for a long while, he could do nothing wrong. His points turned up. The lucky streak went on so long, people came from other tables to watch. Calling his point, he stamped his foot; soon everyone about the table did the same. Six! Fifteen people stamped heavily. Ten! Stamp. His bets became heavier and wilder, the drinks came faster. He lost back all but two hundred dollars of two thousand he won. Hell, he said, he had two thousand dollars’ worth of fun; quitting, he called, “Winston, let’s go,” and long out of money, Winston came willingly. “Come back again, Dynamite,” people called. When he had been hot, he had told everybody who he was. A waiter helped him steer Winston to dry ground, then driving, Son said, “We got to get something to eat before I starve to death.” He found open only a greasy spoon diner on the edge of town and the waitress said she was fixing to close. Son said, “Not till you rustle me up some ham and eggs,” and Winston ordered half a dozen hard-boiled ones. Son was eating when the waitress brought Winston’s eggs, cold, peeled, slithering on the plate. Picking up the nearest container, Winston poured from a great height a long stream of grainy white substance. “What the Sam Hill,” Son said; turning, the waitress said, “Lord help us, he thought it was salt.” A moment, Winston’s face was like a child’s, tricked; then he said, “I like sugar on my Goddamned eggs,” and ate them every one. The next morning, hearing, he groaned, said it might not be too late to lose them eggs, but Son was still laughing.

  They had entered the lobby about midnight; it was deserted, quiet, but Son knew all the way to the top floor people were carrying on various pursuits. Winston gave the elevator boy a dollar and went to meet a girl. Son, getting on, said, “Just let me off where the biggest crap game’s at.”

  Having taken him up, the boy opened the door and said, “You can hear ’em hollering to the lobby from this flo’.” Son started down the corridor and the boy called, “Need anything else, let me know,” and Son called back, “I can find that anytime.” Hearing the sounds he wanted, he opened the door and went into the room, feeling feverish with excitement. His fingers itched in anticipation and belief in himself rose, remembering, feeling again the uncontrollable excitement of winning. He was at home entering; games in hotels were always the same. As firm a rule as if it had been written down somewhere was that craps were shot on the bed. The roll of dice across a sheet, blanket, spread drawn tight was true; dice could not be set. The bed had been pushed into the center of the room, beneath a ceiling fixture that cast light in a spot; floor lamps had been drawn close. Men in shirt-sleeves surrounded the bed and those who through loss or choice kibitzed stood behind, two and three deep. Smoke, whisky, sweat were the smells mingled inseparably, heavily as if it were the room itself, the bare walls, the serviceable carpet, the heavy curtains that gave off the odor. When he opened the door, Son let in fresh air that tumbled smoke about like clouds on a windy day. Every man had his own bottle, in a particular place; using the radiator as landmark, Son set his beside it. Men, looking up, moved aside; someone said, “Let old Dynamite in.”

  Shortly, he was off. Hour after hour the game went on; the only conversation was in relation to it: exclamations, curses, coaxes to luck, expressions of sympathy or congratulations—and these given in half-yells. Men joined the game or left it and their absence or presence never changed the game’s smooth flow. Give the man some room, was a repeated cry: everyone about to throw had a wind-up similar to a pitcher’s, spectators went back then came forward to see and cried out grievously or gladly. Wisely, some did not drink while playing. But Son felt the need of whisky like a stoke for the fire inside him. Winning, he remembered Buzz standing close once to say, “Leave off the bug juice, old man, you might keep some of that money.”

  “Hell, I’ll keep it,” Son said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Buzz said.

  But he felt himself beyond mistakes. The fire inside said the world was his and if he had to choose the perfect moment to leave it, it would be now: at the height of happiness, with people his kind, winning at craps, full of bug juice. Dawn’s first sign was an almost imperceptible lightening of the black past midnight sky into a grey one, growing lighter, with one whiter spot where the sun would be. No one could have said exactly when it was filled with the bright high sun; just suddenly, it was morning and its cast at the window made the men look there. There were ten still playing who for some time had been the only ones. Scratchy, dark-bearded, they rubbed faces, went to the bathroom to wash and someone ordered coffee; others celebrated morning with drink. The initial wildness had gone from the game but the intensity was still there; they spoke softly now, even less frequently. The longest sentence spoken was about eight o’clock when someone said, “Dynamite, you bout to lose everything in this game but your ding-dong.” Son sat forward on a chair drawn close to the bed; he had to grin, agreeing. He ran the flat of his hand over his face and head, smelling his own all-night sour smells. He had not only lost his own money, he had borrowed from e
veryone there and lost that too. He said, “I’m sure in a hell of a mess,” and finished a drink. Whew! he thought; that was the worst damn nigger whisky he’d ever drunk; he had to have been drunk to buy it off that elevator boy. Morning swam dizzily, yet he did not believe drinking affected his game, did not believe it would affect anything he wanted to do except shoot dynamite—and he never went near explosives when he had been drinking. He could not stop playing, lost steadily as earlier he had won. Last night he had been full of that wild free sensation and his bets had matched his spirit. Now without excitement and without money, he could only say, “You boys got me in turr-ble shape.” It was the first time in a long time he had felt in such bad shape: shaky and afraid as he had in the nights of the long and terrible dreams in Mill’s Landing, dreaming once he had delivered dynamite somewhere when he was supposed to have sold it along the way; he remembered that. He had thought the night’s excitement would return but at noon a church bell began to ring and standing, he said, “I owe you boys a bunch of money and I’ll be back with it directly.”

  A man said, “We’ll take your I.O.U., Dynamite,” and another said, hell yes, his credit was good.

  “I owe you some money, I’m going to pay you,” Son said.

  “O.K. Keep your shirt on,” the first man said; they had learned not to cross him unnecessarily. They gave no more thought to what he had said, only knew he would not welsh on paying, and went back to the game. Afterward, the only dispute was over what time he came back: some said it was past two, others said the church bell had not struck the hour. There was nothing else to disagree on; plain as day he stood there, as rumpled, hungover, unshaven as they: a look in his eyes half of amusement, half just plain cold steady look. Visible in every pocket, clutched in both fists before him was money. He knew exactly what he owed everyone, had not written it down, had it burned on his brain. He went around the circle, repaying: “Bubba, I owe you thirty dollars, Claude, I owe you sixty-five dollars and two bits, Fat Boy, I owe you fifty, Uncle Bob, I owe you …” until it was done. Then with a grin triumphant and slightly shy, troubled if you knew, he left them.

  No one ever knew how he borrowed money that quickly from the town’s largest bank, but they heard he went to every one in town until he got the best deal; they put it down finally to the fact that old Dynamite sure had done a whole lot of talking and added it to the list of tales about him. Son went straight to his room and borrowed Winston’s car; he had heard of a man on the road to Natchez who might want some dynamite; if he drove faster than the law allowed he would be back in time for the first letting at four. All he could see to do was go straight back to work, work harder, until he made back not only what he had lost but the interest he would owe the bank. The man did not want any dynamite; but Son never considered a trip a waste; he gave him a card with his name and phone number and said if he ever did want any, now he knew who to call; then he turned the car around and hit the road, lickety-split, back to Vicksburg.

  Will was leaving for the letting as Son arrived at the hotel; they shook hands and Son wished him good luck, then went inside to sit in the lobby and wait. Weeks prior to a letting contractors received a mailing list from the Government, stating it would receive bids on certain work at a certain time; a form was enclosed and a brown envelope for the bid to be sealed in. When he had made his estimate, the contractor mailed his bid to the Engineers. Will had said it reminded him of school; on the designated day the contractors sat in quiet rows with expectant faces; an Engineer entered carrying the brown envelopes as if they might be exam papers just graded. The envelopes were opened, the name of the bidder and his bid read; the information written on a blackboard; quickly it could be seen who was the lowest bidder. Until ten minutes before the envelopes were to be opened, a contractor could change his bid; in a flurry of excitement telegrams often arrived. Work was let in sections called items; Will won the largest job of the afternoon, the only item he had bid on; several smaller jobs went to contractors Son barely knew and he would have to hustle. As quickly as the winners entered the lobby, he invited them to his room, to ride the train and eat a steak afterward. He set out whisky and told the men to fix their own; he didn’t wait on nobody. Many men brought along women and the whisky went fast; Son said they had better go eat and no one suggested the women leave; he invited them too. When there was trouble about his expense account, Scottie said he should not have taken out all those women. Son said not to have invited them was what the other dynamite salesman would have done; what he gained buying a few more steaks was something you couldn’t write down on an expense sheet and if those birds up at American Powder didn’t understand that, he ought to be running the company, not them. From Milwaukee, American’s head called Son, still hedging about the amount he would allow for entertainment. Nobody, he said, in the history of the company had ever spent that much on one night’s entertainment.

  Son said, “Hell, you better get used to it; there’ll be a lot like it.”

  The man said, “Well, now …”

  Son said, “Well’s a deep hole in the ground. I spend the money the way it has to be spent to get the business, and I get the business. You seen the orders I sent in after that letting? I got ever damn one of the big dynamite orders at that letting, ever damn one.”

  Then the man could say nothing except, “All right, Mr. Wynn. But, for God’s sake, next time put down ‘wives’ not ‘women’ when you fill out the sheet.”

  Live and learn, Son thought, hanging up. Those squareheaded Dutch Yankees might be getting a good laugh out of him, but if they looked at his orders, they couldn’t laugh long.

  Red, will and shut-eye left the letting late in the day. Son went with Winston who was anxious to get to Delton and in no shape to drive; soon after leaving at daylight, he fell asleep. On either side the narrow Mississippi highway was lush with greenery and the various calls of birds. Son stuck his foot to the gas pedal thinking how long he had been travelling these roads, how much longer he would have to, and shot the car forward as if to gobble up the road were to gobble up years, plunge himself ahead in time to when he would not have to get up in the morning unless he wanted.

  Only having Winston changed this spring morning from the many so sweetly come to Mississippi into which he had started out, from the hundreds into which he would. Early, mist lifted unnoticeably and the day was beautiful, startling and gentle; the pavement, everything smelled as if it had been washed. Past Negroes on their way to fields they sped and past the cabins they had left, where pot-bellied babies played wearing only little shirts that failed to cover them. Smoke from fires inside cabins and out in yards drifted toward a sky only slightly more blue. The smoke’s smell gave Son a feeling the same as hearing country people in church singing old Baptist and Methodist hymns: one of sadness and yet a feeling as if he had lived a long life and found out something about it; it was rough and finding you had the stuff to make it was half the pleasure; the other half was making things better than they might have been. Sometime you just accepted it was lonely. And, Jesus, it was lonely.

  He thought of a Bible he had won for never missing Sunday School all the elementary years he had gone. Probably not even Mammy remembered. Thinking of old hymns, he thought of an early favorite: What can make me white as snow? Nothing but the blood of Je——sus. What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Je——sus: he sang those lines and Winston, opening his eyes, said, “Is that the radio?”

  “Naw,” Son said, “that’s me.”

  “Boy, you can’t carry a tune in a bucket, can you?” Winston said and closed his eyes again. “That’s what Miss Kate is always telling me,” Son said, hearing her tell others: Frank doesn’t know the difference between Yankee Doodle and Dixie; he guessed she was right and closing music off from himself fell silent, thinking again of Sunday School, how he had gone without urging, and never given trouble there or in school as long as he went. He had been a clean-nosed little boy; he thought of the difference now between himself a
nd his family. The change had taken place, he guessed, as Lillian always said, because of the business he had gone into.

  They rushed on past Leland, Shaw, Cleveland, Hushpuckene, morning in each of the little towns the same as the towns themselves were similar: a square or a pump the center on which the stores fronted; whoever sat on the benches before them was in the middle of town. Old men, Negro and white, came and often sat together, talking or staring out at the road. As early as the stores opened, before the sun was too high, from down every side road, they came, usually the Negroes first, wearing perforated hats, clean clothes, and carrying canes; bound about their heads to catch sweat, handkerchiefs stuck out from hat brims, giving the old men the air of soldiers bandaged haphazardly in long ago wars. Mid-morning, Son stopped at one of the Delta’s numerous Chinese groceries to buy a Coke, rat-trap cheese and crackers. Hung-over, he felt empty, scooped-out, a shell to be filled. Winston woke and went to find a men’s room. Coming from the store, Son stood on the sidewalk eating, listening to the Negroes; he liked their talk. One said, How you today? and another answered, All right, umhummm, meaning the day was fine too. Stubborn, one old man said of another. That man’s stubborn. Stubbornest man I’ve ever seen; still the old man could not let the word go. Stubborn, he said again, poking the sidewalk with his cane. Son heard one man bothered by an insurance collector: I tol’ that man. He come to my house every Thursday then. I’m not afred. The others were a chorus, You right about that. That’s right. That’s the truth. Those who did not speak made the soft little sounds that said the same. One summed up another’s problem: You don’t have no trouble; you got a habit, and Son was laughing when Winston returned. “Come on,” Son said, “you got to have some of the Chinaman’s peanut brittle.” Winston followed, thinking it easier than to argue with Dynamite. Inside the dark, sweet-smelling store, the proprietor nodded amiably. Pointing to the candy, Son said, “Gimme two bits’ worth and give this soandso the same. He ain’t worth a damn but I promised him some of the Chinaman’s peanut brittle, the best I’ve ever eat.”