The Spyglass Tree

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The Spyglass Tree Page 14

by Albert Murray


  But now let me tell you something about them old aristocrats. When you come right down to it, that ain’t nothing but the special few playing politics up there in the high society circles around the king. And don’t care how bad-ass the king hisself is, he also got to be working some smooth jive to stay where he is and then if he really got his shit jumping, he can make hisself the goddamn emperor.

  You see what I mean? And that’s another thing we got to realize, too. I’m talking about us now. Ain’t no mufkin white somitch going to give you nothing he don’t have to. I’m talking about life now, cousin. This ain’t no Sunday school out here. You got to get your ass out there and politic with them. Politic the hell out of them. You just find a way to get in there and dangle enough votes in front of one of them and he’ll bring you your little taste, too. See if he don’t. That’s all it is. Everybody getting their little taste and that other fellow getting his little taste, too. That’s what the king and them aristocrats forgot and that’s how come so many of them wound up losing their hat, ass, and gas mask. You don’t have to have no Ph.D. to dig that. Me, all I ever had was a little old country RFD myself, and I damn sure know it.

  All right, now, you take Cat Rogers for instance. Take Cat Rogers right here in this county. You know why he can kick all them black asses and get away with it? Not so much because he so goddamn badass, although he is as badass as almost any somitch I know. You got to admit that. Cat Rogers is one more badass peckerwood, gentlemen. I ain’t joking That’s one out-and-out badass somitch on his own, starbadge or no starbadge. Don’t let nobody fool you. That redneck somitch will pull off that goddamn badge and pistol in a minute just on general principles. You want to make it something personal? That’s all right with him. But that ain’t how come he can get away with it, because I know some badass boot somitches just as bad as he is, when you come right down to that. But he can get away with it and they can’t because them that puts him in charge of the county jail lets him have his leeway, because it keeps things in line so they can keep their little taste coming like it always has. All this stuff is logic, gentlemen. You got to dig the logic of this stuff. Now get this. When these goddamn crybabies gang around talking about Cat Rogers this and Cat Rogers that, I tell them when you get yourself enough votes to get rid of Cat Rogers, you won’t even have to get rid of him because he going to be seeing to it that you getting your little taste just like everybody else. Now that’s politics, pardner, and that’s what democracy is all about. Don’t care what they got in them books up there.

  Then he said, Say boy, goddamn! Is your head shaped like this or is I’m cutting it like this? And everybody laughed and he stood back looking at the freshman’s head as if he couldn’t believe it was real.

  Boy, you got the goddamndest head I ever seen in all my born days.

  Everybody kept on laughing and the freshman was laughing, too. There was nothing wrong with his head and he knew it. Deke Whatley swung the chair around so that he could look out to the sidewalk and then he turned it so that the freshman could see himself in the mirror and then he want on talking in another tone of voice.

  What’s your name, son?

  The freshman told him.

  Where you from?

  Birmingham.

  You from the Ham?

  Yes, sir.

  What part of the Ham you from?

  The freshman told him.

  Goddamn, boy, you ought to know something if you come from the Ham. You know old Joe Ramey up in the ’ham?

  Yes, sir.

  Old Joe the Pro.

  Yes, sir.

  Boy, you know something. You supposed to know something. That goddamn Joe Ramey is the greatest cat in the world, boy. What’d you say your name was?

  The freshman told him again.

  Well, boy, if you know Joe Ramey, you know one hell of a cat. Hey, this boy is all right. Mark my words, gentlemen.

  Hey, what the hell does this Joe Ramey do, Deke? Govan Edwards asked. He was not waiting his turn. He was there because the barbershop was one of the places he liked to drop in on several times a week. I knew him as a sports fan but I was never quite sure what he did for a living.

  Do? Man, that goddamn Joe Ramey can do just about anything he want to. You know him, don’t you, Red?

  Who, Joe Ramey? Do I know Joe Ramey!

  The door opened and Showboat Parker, cab number nine, the only Cadillac taxi in town, stuck his head in and said, Hey, in here, and came on in pushing the door shut behind him and leaning back against it as he checked to see who all was present.

  I said, Hey in here, he said, and somebody said, Shoby, and somebody else said, What say Shoby, and somebody else said, What’s happening Shoby, and he said, Man, ain’t nothing happening, and this is the weather for it. What’s the matter with these people? and somebody said, The day is still young, give them time, Shoby. But you must have picked up some kind of news out there.

  Man, ain’t no news, he said. White folks still out in front that’s all I can tell you. And when Pete Carmichael said, Well that sure God ain’t no news, he said, You goddamn right it ain’t. Us white folks so far ahead of you cotton-picking granny dodgers, it ain’t even funny no more. And when Pop Collins said, Hell, it ain’t never been funny, he said, Hell, it better not be funny. What the fuck, you’d think this is. This ain’t no goddamn vaudeville. This is life in the nitty goddamn gritty. You goddamn people always laughing too much anyhow.

  Hey, wait a minute now, Deke Whatley said, holding up his clippers, Hey now hold on there because that ain’t the way I heard it. The way my grandpappy told me, all that grinning and laughing is a part of our African mother wit, because the first thing our African forefathers found out after they realized that all them hungry-looking peckerwoods was not going to eat them was that if you didn’t grin at them, white folks would be scared shitless of us all the goddamn time and ain’t no telling what they might do. My old grandpa told me, if you ain’t got nothing but a stick and a brick, you don’t go around making somebody nervous that’s got cannon and a Gatling gun.

  Then he said, But now tell me this. If white folks so far out in front, how come they spend so much time worrying about what we doing? They supposed to have everything already nailed up and they always coming up with another one of these books to prove that we too dumb to figure out how to get it unnailed.

  You got me the answer for that? he said, and Showboat Parker said, Now come on, Deacon, you know good and well that us white folks don’t have to account to the likes of y’all for nothing we do. It ain’t for y’all to understand how come us white folks doing anything. We just want y’all to learn how to read well enough to know your place, and we got a million-dollar school right here to teach you.

  They were all laughing again then, and he said, What say there, Red Boy? What say, Skeets and the rest of y’all?

  Skeeter swirled the chair, and you could see them in the mirror. Showboat sat in Sack McBride’s empty chair and leaned back, crossing his legs and folding his hands over his taxi driver’s paunch, his cap tipped down over his eyes.

  Where were you last night, Red Boy?

  Trying to get somewhere and do myself some good, man, Red Gilmore told him.

  The boys missed you.

  Man, I couldn’t make it. Not from where I was last night.

  The stuff was there.

  How’d you make out?

  Man, me, I ain’t held a decent hand yet.

  What about Old Saul?

  Aw, man, they cleaned Old Saul Baker out way before midnight. Man, Old Saul was probably home in bed by midnight last night.

  How about Giles?

  Man, don’t say nothing to me about no Giles Cunningham. Old Giles, hunh?

  That goddamn Giles Cunningham is one of the gamblingess somitches in the world today.

  Old Giles checked them to the locks, hunh?

  I believe that somitch would have broke the Federal Reserve last night, man.

  Old Giles.

&nbs
p; Talking about hot, goddamn but that somitch was hot last night.

  Yancey got them tonight?

  Yeah.

  That’s what I thought. I guess I might peep me a few of them myself this evening.

  You welcome to it, Red. But me, man, the hell with some old poker tonight. Man, I know something else I can do with my little change beside giving it to that goddamn Giles Cunningham.

  When I left, they were still talking about Giles Cunningham, but on the way back to the dormitory I was thinking about Old Dewitt Dawkins once more because he was the one that listening to Deke Whatley always made me remember again. Old Dewitt Dawkins who had the best reputation of any baseball umpire and prizefight referee anywhere in the Mobile and Gulf Coast area.

  Old Dewitt Dawkins, also known as Judge Dawk the Hawk because when he used to come into Shade’s Tonsorial Parlor across from Boom Men’s Union Hall on Greens Avenue (always with the latest editions of the Reach and Spalding baseball guides and his up-to-date world’s almanac), it was very much as if the circuit judge had come to town to hold court and deliver verdicts, which he did with lip-smacking precision in a diction that was deliberately stilted.

  The first thing that probably came to most people’s minds when you mentioned Dewitt Dawkins was the way he used to call baseball games back in those days before the radio sportscasters became the voice you associated with the ongoing action. There was a time when all of the baseball youngsters in Gasoline Point used to say In the window! for a called strike because that was the way Dawk the Hawk (as in hawkeye) called them.

  But what the political gospel according to Deke Whatley had brought back to my mind was something that I had heard from Old Dewitt Dawkins in his high seat on the shoe-shine stand in Shade’s barbershop one rainy afternoon in August of the summer before my junior year at Mobile County Training School when he was explaining why we already had too many people signifying and not nearly enough qualifying.

  Not that he wasn’t still calling balls and strikes. No matter what he was talking about, he spread his hands to give the safe-on-base sign when he agreed with or approved of something. When somebody made a point or he himself was giving the word, he gave the strike sign to indicate it was on target, which was to say In the window! So to show his disagreement or disapproval, he jerked his thumb giving the out sign to which he would sometimes add with his most stiltedly precise enunciation:

  Tough

  shit (pause)

  you done torn

  your

  na-

  tu-

  ral-

  ass!

  Out of my face, out of my face. Out of my face, you disgrace to the human race.

  What the hell do we need with some more loudmouth hustlers out there carrying on like they got to get those people told because nobody ever did before, he said that afternoon.

  That many of us were all in Shade’s because the game with Maysville had been called for weather in the second inning. Hell, as far as that goes, we already had a silver-tongue orator none other than the one and only Honorable Fred Douglass himself doing that all the way back during bondage and on into the war for Emancipation and right on through the whole Reconstruction mess and into the times of old Grover Cleveland, and I don’t know anybody that ever did it better since.

  He said, We don’t need any more horror stories trying to put the shame on those people as if they don’t know what the hell they themselves been doing to us all these years. Just look at what they did to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Those same people put on black faces and turned the whole goddamn thing into a big road-show minstrel, traveling all over the country.

  So much for getting them told, he said, and then he said, Now I’m going to tell you something once and for all about the shame and the blame. If you got the problem and don’t buckle down and come up with a solution, hang your own goddamn head in shame, and if you go all the way through college and don’t come back with some answers, shame on us all.

  XIX

  What happened between Giles Cunningham and Dudley Philpot out at the Pit while I was browsing in the periodicals room later on that afternoon had really begun almost a week earlier when Giles Cunningham and Wiley Peyton had stopped Will Spradley as he came along the railroad spur that used to run from the loading ramp and coal chute at the campus power plant and on through town and out to the siding at the station where trains eastbound from Montgomery and westbound from Atlanta used to stop without being flagged in those days.

  It was payday for most people who didn’t work on the campus, and before leaving on a three-day business trip up to Chattanooga, Giles Cunningham was making the rounds to collect a few overdue personal loans he had made during the past several months. When he and Wiley Peyton saw Will Spradley, they were on their way to see who just happened to be hanging out in Jack’s Chicken Shack just outside the campus entrance near the band cottage.

  Will Spradley had been just rounding the bend near the old Strickland mansion and had been coming on walking that loping walk toward where the first downtown subdivision began, when Wiley Peyton who was driving saw him and said, Well, here’s your Will what’s-his-name over there, and Giles Cunningham had said, Pull over, and Wiley Peyton had brought the big Cadillac onto the soft shoulder and shut off the motor, and Giles Cunningham had said, Spradley, Will; and Will Spradley had jumped and said, Gile, what say, Gile? and came down the grade and across the grassy ditch and up to the car and said, Gile, again. What say, Gile?

  Will Spradley had stood looking into the car but at the dashboard, not at Giles Cunningham who was not looking at him either but at the misty early spring tree-line beyond the fence on the other side of the spur tracks and who said, Don’t you have a little something to see me about? and Will Spradley had said, Yeah, Gile, sure Gile, I ain’t forgot it, Gile.

  I was just going on down into town and I was coming right on by to see you just as soon as I took care of some other little business first, Will Spradley had said then, talking and then listening, but still not looking at anything but the dashboard, and when there was no reply he had gone on and said, That’s exactly what I was on my way to do, Gile.

  Then Giles Cunningham had said, So here I am just tickled to death to save you that long walk. He still didn’t look at him but he was listening very carefully because he knew that with Will Spradley you almost always had to read between the lines.

  I’m going to have to see you a little later, Gile.

  Today’s payday, ain’t it?

  I mean later on today, Gile. I’m talking about today, a little later on today, Gile.

  You been paid, ain’t you?

  I’m going to see you later on, Gile. I’m going to have your money then, every penny I been owing you, Gile.

  You mean, you ain’t got it on you? I thought you just said you already been paid.

  I mean, I just want you to let me see you a little later on, Gile. That’s all I mean. I just mean I can’t pay you right now, he said, and Giles Cunningham said, Now what kind of shit is this, man? You got your paycheck, didn’t you, or is that it?

  Wiley Peyton sat at the steering, wheel looking along the corridor of the March green branches of the wooded bend on the left side of which you could see the turnoff that led to the stone pillars and wrought-iron gates to the old Strickland manor house. The strip of off-campus shops, including Jack’s Chicken Shack, was out of sight about a quarter of a mile farther along, and then there was the campus.

  He heard what was being said and not being said, and it was all old stuff to him, and besides it was not really anything that concerned him. What he spent most of his time dealing with was the operation of the Pit. But even so he heard Will Spradley say that he had the check with him, and he knew what was coming next.

  Aw, hell, man, I thought you were talking about some kind of a problem.

  So I’m going to see you later on, Gile.

  You already got your check, so see me now.

  But it ain’t cashed yet, Gile. That�
�s how come I got to be getting on downtown just now.

  Man, what the hell you talking about? The goddamn bank been closed for nearly two hours.

  But that’s not what I’m talking about, Gile. I got some other little business I got to see to first. Then I going to be right on out there to see you.

  Where you going to see me?

  At your place.

  Which place?

  Which one you going to be at?

  I’m on my way out of town.

  Well, when you get back then.

  The hell you will. Here, I’ll cash your check. He stretched his legs, pushing his shoulders against the back of the seat and pulled a roll of bills out and took a fountain pen and a flat check-holder from his inside coat pocket.

  Hey, you can’t do that, Gile.

  Can’t do what, man?

  You can’t cash it.

  Man, you wasting my time. Sign that goddamn check and hand it here.

  Will Spradley didn’t move. He was looking at both of them then, but Wiley Peyton was still looking straight ahead, and Giles Cunningham just sat waiting and listening as if not looking at anything in particular, but he saw Will Spradley take a step back from the car as he heard him say, I can’t do it, Gile. I done told you I’m going to pay you what I owe you and I will, but I owe somebody else and he supposed to cash my check.

  Man, what’s the difference who cashes it? Now you going to sign that fucking check and hand it here, or do I have to get out of this car and kick your ass? Man, I don’t feel like kicking nobody’s ass today. I just want my little change so I can be on my way. Look, I’m even going to forget about the goddamn interest. Here, just sign the son-of-a-bitch and get the hell out of my face.

 

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