The man at the counter whispers something to Corky and then looks over at him. She shakes her head and sticks her tongue out at bird cop. She has a beautiful tongue connected there at the back of that little mouth, the full pouty lips, moving so slowly inside that cavern edged with pearly white teeth, shaping the slow words of a perfect Southern accent. His mother sounds that way and he used to, a while ago; it seems that sometime or another he had made a conscious effort to change his voice so that he wouldn’t sound like everyone else in the South. But the trucker had recognized that he did not have a New York accent. God, he has no accent. He is the example of what everyone will soon sound like. Such a shame for that girl’s voice to change. He would like to lock her away and protect her as a relic of passing time.
“You reckon he’s really a Mason?” the cop asks and she shrugs, her shoulders lifting the neck of her blue uniform like he imagines it would do if she were to breathe deeply. How does the cop know that? Now, that cop gets up and walks over to the table. “Hey, can you prove that you’re a Mason?”
“To another one,” he says and watches Corky walking back over. Her feet don’t even make a sound.
“Well give it to me then, Buddy.” The cop steps even closer and squats down beside the table.
“Don’t tell him a thing. He’s not one himself.” Now Corky is standing by the table, too, a pot of hot coffee right over the cop’s head.
“Shut up, Corky, this is police work.”
“Don’t believe him; he’s trying to get your secrets so maybe they’ll let him in.” She gives a mean look to the cop. “If you were doing police work, you’d be out looking for that murderer.” Murderer, they got murder and rape and robbery. He remembers giving the secret word and shake. It was to the man that was in here a little while ago. Then this man came in and that other man did all the talking, something about a black person. He is remembering.
“Are you sure that you didn’t see anything going on at the Quik Pik?”
“Huh?”
“Leave him alone, Bob, Harold told you what happened.” She puts the pot on a dishtowel and sits back down. “Go on and finish your coffee so you really can go to work.”
“You need something else?” she asks, and he loves the way that her tongue pushes up against her teeth when she says things.
He shakes his head. It’s finally starting to feel better. “Did he say a murderer?”
“Yeah, you know what you saw last night.” Before she even finishes the picture comes to him fuzzily and then clear, so clear, down to the napkins in the mouth, that bluish color around the lips and nose.
“Oh God.” He puts his face in his hands and shakes his head. “You see what I mean? It’s happening everywhere, the same thing.”
“Hey, I know you’re upset.” She reaches over and rubs his hand. “Where bouts you from?” Her voice lightens and she tugs on his hand, lets go.
“South Cross,” he says without lifting his head from the table.
“Wow, I’ve heard of that. I’ve heard it’s sort of swanky.”
“Some parts.” He cannot help himself, human weakness; he has to look at her, to reach across the table and touch her hand the way that she had touched his. She glances over at that cop and he’s staring right at them. She acts nervous, pulls her hand away, puts more coffee in his cup. She stares without blinking one tiny blink. “Has anybody ever told you that you look a little like Dr. Zhivago?”
“No.” He shakes his head, that shaved head that he shaved so that he would never look like anybody. But for some reason, he doesn’t mind, doesn’t mind being compared to Omar Sharif. “It’s your eyes, so brown and sad looking.”
“Your eyes are not like any that I’ve ever seen.” He hadn’t meant to say that. He is losing control. He hadn’t planned to reach over and brush away that sprig of hair right near her eye but he does it. “You’re different. I’ve seen a lot of people but no one that seemed as different as you.” He leans forward. “I saw that dead man and I didn’t want to see it but it was like a symbol of what happens. That man could have been anybody or nobody, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that human nature had struck out again.”
“But he was somebody. Charles Husky was somebody and it’s not like he could have been just anybody to his wife and daughter or to me, or anyone with any feeling. I can’t believe you’d say that it doesn’t matter.” He has made those eyes fill up and overflow onto her face; made her take a deep breath and lift the neck of her dress. He has made her feel something. Now she has her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking. “I think it’s awful. It’s not human nature, either; it’s crazy is what it is! It’s wrong!” The bird cop has swung off of his stool and is loping this way.
“What did you say to her, boy?” The man grabs Sam by the collar. “Mason or not I don’t care, nobody gets Corky all upset and gets away with it.” The man shakes him and he feels like his head might fall off. “You saw the dead man, big deal, do you know whose job it is to go out and find his murderer? Mine, that’s whose!”
“So why don’t you do it, instead of butting into private conversations?” She wipes her face. “It wasn’t his fault I got upset. I know what he was saying, kind of.”
Sam is thinking that he’d like to show her his driver’s license so that she could see him with hair; suddenly for the first time, he is self-conscious about his hair and clothes.
The cop tries to hug her, but she pushes away and starts picking up Sam’s dirty glasses. “He ain’t going to mess with you any more. He looks like the kind that would take advantage of a little girl like you, looks like the kind that probably knows a lot about niggers.” He puts his thumbs under his holster belt and laughs, his head bobbling all around. “Maybe I could use him on the case after all. Have him sniff down that nigger.”
“Shut up, Bob! Just shut up!” She spins around and throws a cup to the floor. “I’m sick of hearing what you’ve got to say and sick of you acting like I’m some property of yours to watch out for, and sick of your ugly talk!”
“What ugly talk?”
“Try N-i-g-g-e-r, try that!” She kicks the pieces of the broken cup into a little pile. Sam watches her gray eyes harden, watches her kick her feet.
“Oh, I forgot. I forgot that you moved out of Granner Weeks’ house when you got yourself that high school diploma! I forgot that you moved into that rat’s nest of a boarding house where you got niggers for neighbors!”
“It’s none of your business!”
“Just watching out for you, Corky, a dizzy little girl like you. You got no business living with trash, nobody to care for you when you could settle down with a nice smart man that would look after you.” The cop, this bird Bob, perches back on his stool and laughs.
“I reckon you mean yourself? Well, let me tell you something, Bob Bobbin, I wouldn’t touch you with a ten foot pole, and that’s why you’re always picking at me. Cause I never have and I never will touch you!”
“You been with worse, Corky Revels. Matter of fact, you been with about everybody I know. I reckon you’re saving me for marriage.”
“Go to hell!” She screams until her fair little face is all red. Sam Swett thinks that he ought to do something, to say something, but no, he’s going to watch it all. Bob Bobbin is walking away now. He turns at the door, his hands on his hips, his hat pulled low on his forehead. “Whore!” he says.
“Whorehopper that can’t find nobody to hop!” Corky swings around and walks to the door, her dishtowel all twisted up and ready to pop like Sam used to do as a child at the swimming pool, and what made him suddenly remember that? “Cause you’re uglier than a mud fence full of worms and stupid to boot!” She tries to swat his face but he runs out the door, laughing still though his face is beet red, gets into his car and drives off. Corky stands there a minute breathing hard, and Sam is enjoying that breathing sound, those little gasps for air.
“I reckon you heard all of that,” she says but doesn’t look over.
“Na
h, wasn’t really paying attention.”
“Being nice don’t work on me. I’m too smart for that. People may not think so, but I am.” She turns and her eyes are wide open now, taking him in, his eyes, his head. Now, he is really embarrassed; he is trying to remember exactly what the picture on his license looks like. She is still staring when she sits back down. “I know you heard all of those terrible things. Go on, admit it!”
“Yeah, I did, but first I want to tell you that I’m real sorry that I upset you. You know, even though I didn’t know that man, even though it happens all the time, it still made me sort of sick.” It really did make him sick, even though he was already sick. Now he just wants to make her smile again, to feel that cool hand over his face again. “I don’t know why I said all of that.”
“It’s all right,” she says and bites her lip, that perfect little pouting lip. “I sort of got what you were saying, you know, so much bad happens, to where you just don’t want to go on feeling.” She sighs and sits back. “It’s okay.” She looks out the window and he sees her profile like white on black, like those that everyone made in kindergarten, but add the color, the freckles on that tilted nose, the dark lashes framing that pale gray eye.
“You seem like a smart girl to me,” he says and then continues, afraid that doesn’t sound quite right. “You know, not dizzy and kooky like that guy said.”
Finally she laughs. “You’re about the first person that’s ever said that to me. Everybody else seems to think I’m crazy just because I like to be by myself sometimes, or because I haven’t gone off to school, or because I don’t run my mouth all the time.”
“They’re wrong.” He cannot help but reach across the table and touch her arm again.
“I know that. I just never knew anybody else who thought the same.”
“So, now you have; Gorky’s your name, right?”
“Yep, I knew you must’ve listened.” She moves her arm away from him and crosses both arms over her stomach. “What’s your name?”
“Sam, Sam Swett.” It sounds so funny to hear his name out loud.
“Sam, I like that,” she says and smiles. “And you’re nice. You’re a little different from most people around here, but you seem nice.” She is staring, staring like she can see straight through him, and when he inches up on his seat she looks away. “So why is your hair all cut off, the service?”
“No.” He shakes his head and tries to think of a good reason. “I can show you a picture with hair.” He pulls out his wallet and hands her his license. “It isn’t a very good picture but you can see what I look like with hair.”
“I like you with hair.” She hands back the license. “Will it come back, or is it gone for good?”
“I just shaved it myself. I don’t know why, you know, it was sort of a dumb thing to do.” He rubs his hands over the prickles and shakes his head from side to side.
“I got a brother that’s ten years older than me and he used to have long long hair, down to here.” She draws a line with her finger around her elbow. “Then he got it all shaved off.”
“Why did he do it?”
“Service.” She looks away again. “He still keeps his real short.”
“I never had real long hair, you know, all that was sort of over with when I came through. I’m twenty-one now.”
“Same here. I’m eighteen.”
It gets quiet for a few minutes and he doesn’t want that to happen, he doesn’t want her to stop talking and for it all to end. “What did that guy mean when he said that you went with everybody in town?”
“Now, you see, you heard every single word and not a bit of truth.” She bends down and picks up a paper napkin from the floor. “Why do you even ask?”
“Just wondering, you know, figured you must have a boyfriend or maybe that he used to be your boyfriend or something.” Sam Swett hates that term “boyfriend” but he doesn’t know what else to say.
“No I don’t, and I’ve never run around with people like Bob Bobbin said.” Now the flush is in her cheeks, a pale pink on white like a china doll.
“Never?” For some reason, a reason that he is uncertain of, he is determined to push this subject. It is as if he wants to feel jealous and envious, and that’s ridiculous, considering he hardly knows this girl, considering that those emotions, any emotions, are what lead to destruction.
“Look, I don’t even know you.” She pulls away right when the bells ring and a young couple come up to the counter and sit on the bar stools. She goes over quickly and gets two water glasses. “Coffee break, right?” she asks and the two nod. “Two cinnamon rolls and two coffees, right?” Again they nod and she disappears into the back. He can’t let her get away this easily. When she reappears and serves the people, she walks back over. “You might should leave, you know?”
“Can I see you later?” He reaches for her hand again but she moves away and holds her pad and pencil right up against her chest. “Please.” He knows that he is begging, becoming a desperate animal and he can’t help it. He is past the objective point and he is objective enough to realize this, objective enough that he knows he doesn’t care.
“I get off at one,” she says and steps a little closer. “Now we can sit here and eat lunch or something but then I’ve got somewhere to go at three.”
“A date?”
“No, a birthday party.” She shakes her head and for some reason starts laughing again. “You think maybe you could get yourself a shower before lunch?”
“Yes. Yes, I’ll take a shower, be here at one.”
“Okay, here’s your check.” She very carefully tears his check off and places it right beside his waiting open palm. He pulls out his wallet and keeps looking up at her while she shifts from foot to foot.
“Do you take Visa?” Now he remembers, he has no cash, just plastic money, gotta pay that hotel bill, too, get it for another night.
“Just forget it.” She steps back so that he can get up and she walks a few steps in front of him to the door. “See you later,” she whispers and he walks out, around to the window where she finally waves, again. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do until one. That’s three and a half hours away.
3
Juanita Weeks is having to rush around like a chicken with its head cut off because she overslept. God knows she had every reason to oversleep after those thoughts keeping her up near about all night long. She bends over and brushes her hair forward and then shakes it back so that it falls around her shoulders in a bushy mass of frosted curls. She loves her curly perm; she loves to let hair that should be where it is go free. “That do suits you to a tee,” Harold had told her, “kind of loose and free and sparkly.” Of course that was before all that other happened. She pulls on a pair of aqua terry cloth shorts and a striped top that matches. After all, she can put on her white jacket when she gets down to the shop, and it’s too durn hot to get all dressed up.
“Come on, kids,” Juanita screams, and bundles up her swimsuit and towel so she can take a dip herself after work. She’s already decided that she’s going to close at noon, and she does that a lot in the summer so that she can spend time with the kids, but mostly because she herself likes to sunbathe and swim. Patricia comes slouching out in her new suit, a tiny bikini that don’t do a thing for her since she’s so flat-chested. Juanita tried to tell her, right there in Belk’s, but Patricia would not hear of it, pitched a fit until Juanita bought that suit and now what does she do but slouch around to hide the fact that there’s nothing in that top. “Stand up straight, honey, you don’t want your spine to stick that way.”
“Oh mother.” That’s just about all that Patricia says these days is “oh mother.” Juanita has an idea that Patricia has heard all about what happened, or worse, some updated rumor, and Patricia ain’t about to talk about it. Patricia flops down in a chair and starts messing with her necklace, or acting like she is. She is really peeking down her top to see if any growth has occurred overnight. Lord knows, she’s just
fifteen and Juanita keeps on telling her she’s still got plenty of time, may just be a late bloomer, which she herself was not.
“Come on, Harold, Jr.” she screams and here he comes, a cowlick sticking straight up on the top of his head just like his Daddy’s used to do.
“It’s Granner’s birthday today,” he says and levels his eyes at Juanita. He is the oldest eleven-year-old that she has ever met. The only thing childlike about him is that E.T. doll, and he hides that if a friend comes over. “We’re going, aren’t we?”
“You know we’re not,” Patricia says and stands up, pulls her coverup all the way around her and holds it that way. Lord knows, Patricia needs a perm or something to give that dirty blonde hair a little body, and more than likely she’s gonna need a little inner thigh thinning if she keeps it in her mind to be a flag girl at the high school in those skimpy suits. It always has amazed Juanita that hair will be thin where it’s supposed to be, and thick where it ain’t. Thank the Lord that she can handle all the hair problems for free.
“She’s not about to go where she might see Daddy.” Patricia prances by and lets the screen door slam shut.
“Well, I think we ought to go.” Harold, Jr., is still staring at her. “Granner will be awful mad if we don’t.”
“I think you children should go.” Juanita goes out the door so that Patricia can hear what she’s saying as well. “Slam that door good now Harold, Jr., so it’ll lock.” Juanita has to talk louder because Patricia is already at the car. “I think you two should go, never thought otherwise, else why would I have gone out after work yesterday and bought a nice present for you to carry over?”
“Oh mother.” Patricia gets in and slams her door. “You know how Aunt Kate and Uncle Ernie treat us anyway. They’ll say all kinds of things when you don’t show up.”
“Your Daddy is going to be there and they won’t say a thing about it.” Juanita pulls out her Foster Grants before cranking the car. “I know that pool’s going to feel good today.”
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