A Walk on the Wild Side (19 page)

Dove ran one down before he understood – then let it blow after the others like watching all hope die.

‘
Goodbuddy
’ – a sort of soft horror had caught in Smiley’s throat – ‘Who told you we sold to
Negras?
’

Dove sat heavily on the curb, took off his left shoe and pressed the sockless toes. Smiley mounted post above him.

‘Git up, boy.’

Dove switched to the right-foot toes. They hurt like everything.

‘Face up to it, boy,’ the Georgian urged him.

‘
Got
to face up,’ the Floridan counseled him.

Dove’s glance took in all three. ‘I resign from you-all,’ he resigned from all three.

Smiley bent swiftly, scooped up Dove’s proud shoes, handed the left to the Georgian and the right to the Floridan – ‘Whut’s it going to be, boy – pot or shoes?’

Dove, risen, found his voice at last – ‘Them shoes costes more ’n
any
ol’ tin pot!’

‘Aint no ol’ tin pot, boy,’ the Georgian defended Old Dominion, ‘you know right well that there’s a genuine French Dripolator.’

‘Get goin’, son,’ the Floridan advised him.

Dove shuffled down the grass while Smiley padded the pavement the whole barefoot way back to the tenement.

‘Mister,’ Dove promised Smiley Wreneger at the door, ‘you wait here. I’ll git you back your sorry pot.’

Smiley snapped open his watch, gave it a glance and closed it with a decisive click. ‘Don’t like to law a man. You got five minutes.’

The moment Dove got a door between himself and Smiley he thought, ‘This might take more than five,’ and latched it. Then poked his head inside the beaded curtain Minnie-Mae called a door. Her eyes glowed upon him from a farther corner like two plums in a bowl of cream.

‘Don’t stand half in and half out, cawfee man,’ she invited him, ‘either come visit or go away.’

Dove stepped inside, apologizing, ‘Don’t mean to appear ongrateful, miss, for you’ve been pure-quill kind. But a certain party has carried me back here account of one old coffee-pot. Now aint that as sorry a circumstance as ever you heard tell?’

The girl was sitting in an old-fashioned rocker wearing only a white wisp of a slip. Somewhere in the room punk was burning. But her own scent, burning more darkly than that, cut through it.

‘Why, where your fine yellow shoes, cawfee man?’

‘The company’s holding them against that same pitiful pot. O
miss
,’ Dove broke with the disappointment, ‘I
do
try my very
hardest
. Other boys rise without scarcely tryin’ – Why don’t
I
rise like other boys?’ He covered his eyes with the back of his hand.

‘Why for very
shame
’ – she took his hands down and caught them softly below her own along the rocker’s arms – ‘shame and
double double
shame on a great big cawfee man like you takin’ things so hard as this. Of
course
you’ll rise as high as other boys and likely even higher!’

‘I’m not as right sure of that as I once was, miss, however kind on your part to say so. You see, I got handicaps others haven’t got.’ His knees pressed her own and she let them press. ‘You don’t
appear
handicapped, cawfee man.’

‘In more ways than one, miss,’ he leaned as he mourned, ‘more ways than one. First, I can’t so much as read my own name. For another, there’s a man right outside your door waitin’ to law me. Now if that aint as pitiful a set of circumstances for a country boy to overcome I never heard of pitifuller.’

‘O
caw
fee man,’ she chided him tenderly, tucking his hands back below her own, ‘you
are
the biggest country fool ever to walk barefoot to town. Now tell me
true
 – What color
wuz
that mizzly old pot you keep grievin’ so about?’

Dove rocked her forward to get a closer look at the pot, gleaming like a burnished treasure in the gloom on the mantel just above the girl’s head. ‘Mostly green, Miss.’ Could he get a hand loose he could reach it.

‘
Caw
fee man, you upsettin’ me’ – and putting her feet wide behind him and her full weight forward, forced him to grasp the rocker back of her neck to keep from being upset himself.

— ‘and a spot of red on the handle.’

‘O so you
say
’ – she hooked her ankles behind his and her arms about his waist to help him keep his balance – ‘So you say, but who ever heard tell of a red ’n green cawfee pot? I don’t think you’d lie, yet it’s hard for a girl to believe – a red ’n green pot.’ Yet for one in grave doubt her voice sounded curiously approving; and let him rock her forward again. ‘What I
really
wants to know is
do
it make good cawfee?’

‘Why, they tell
me
it cook pretty fair, miss. Yet it
could
be that they lied. It’s a thing I’d not take another person’s word for, were I you.’

‘I ’spects it depend some on whether I grinds my own.’

‘It’s always best do you grind your own, miss. For that way it’s much fresher.’

‘So
you
say. But what good is fresh if there aint enough to satisfy? Mister, if you talkin’ ’bout some little old scrawny-size pot I aint interested. What I needs is a
great big pot
, enough for both morning and night.’

‘So long as it make good cawfee, miss, size don’t scarcely matter.’

‘It matter a lot if it so small it boil over the minute your back is turned.’

‘This is a slow-boiler type pot, miss,’ Dove recalled, rocking her back so far that her slip slid to her navel, ‘with a spot of red on the handle.’

Minnie-Mae let her head rest on the chair’s cushioned back and looked up still unbelieving. ‘So
you
say. But you talks so smooth I begin to doubt you’s a country boy at all. You a city boy without shoes – Now
aint
you?’

Dove straightened up with a sudden pride. ‘I’m purely country, miss, head to toe, and aint nothin’ to be ashamed of in
that
. It weren’t town boys made our country great – when danger called it was country boys first to answer the call! And many and many a barefoot boy has rose mighty high, though I don’t recall their names at the moment. Us country boys, we give our
all!
 – O miss, if only someone would give
me
a chance to rise I wouldn’t ask for pay. You don’t get rich askin’ for raises, that much I know. It’s the boys who were willing to work just for the experience got to be millionaires! Miss, if I could just get my shoes back I’m sure I’d start to rise like others.’

‘Why you just said yourself boys without shoes rise more high than them that has them. Don’t handicap yourself further by puttin’ on shoes, you comical fool.’

Someone tried the latch of the door, then padded softly off. Dove saw the pot almost within reach and felt himself gaining ground inch by inch.

‘Your belt-buckle botherin’ me, country-fool.’

The old-fashioned rocker went creakety-creak.

‘
Now
grind cawfee and god
damn
your country shoes!’

But Dove only stood waggling his loose tooth, carefully gauging the distance to the pot with his pants around his ankles. He got his little finger around the spout when he heard a swamp mosquito taxiing in: he knew it was a swamp mosquito because it had two motors. It raced down the runway of his left buttock, rocked to a stop, then tried the flesh tentatively as if testing for density. Dove gave his rump a waggle to shake it loose and the movement cost the insect its footing. With the fury of any dignified individual shoved without warning into the street, it planted both feet to gain the greatest leverage and sank its avid proboscis so deep Dove leaped like a hare with the pang.

‘O CAWfee man! O you MIGHTY CAWfee man! O you cawfeegrinding CAWfee man! O you grind so
good!
O you
my
cawfiest cawfee man!’ The bug began drilling for bone but the girl gripped both his wrists. All Dove could do was waggle and jerk in a perfect frenzy and the harder he waggled and jerked the more resolved the bug grew to get a bit of bone.

‘I get you shoes! I get you shirts! I get you hats ’n all that! O
proud
-size cawfee man!’ – then her voice was drowned in a grateful animal groaning – ‘
Gawd! Gawd! Gawd!
’ And with every ‘Gawd’ she regained lost ground, climbing his back and forcing him further and further from the pot. By the time her ankles were locked behind his neck Dove knew he was losing territory fast. As the old-fashioned rocker went creakety-creak.

‘Out of that!’ The girl’s foot slipped around Dove’s chin and by her instep catapulted him as if he’d been kicked by a mule. He landed entangled in his pants just as Smiley crashed through the window bringing sash, screen and all with him.

Minnie-Mae met Smiley mid-room with the full momentum of the chair behind her – Dove shut his eyes at the soft solid
whooosh
as her fist broke Smiley’s breath and his legs flew up and he landed even harder than had Dove.

As an empty rocker went clickety-click.

‘I love a fool,’ Dove heard the girl tell, ‘but you two suits me too well.’

‘One of them must be me,’ Dove guessed, though she was looking down at Smiley with the pot in her hand. ‘Get out of here, cawfee fool,’ she added, and Dove hopped to it, kangarooing right across Smiley – in mid-air a fat hand clasped his ankle – down he came once again.

‘Miscegenation!’ Smiley sat up roaring, hauling Dove in like he was something on a line. ‘Miscegenation ’n pot theft! Dirt-eatin’ bugger! Wheah’s my pot?’

‘Heah’s
my
pot!’ – Minnie-Mae proved whose it was once and for all by clanging it like a bell against his skull. Dove heard the tinny
wanning
, felt his ankle freed, sprawled across a chest and was out the window. He landed running, gripping his belt and pursued by an illusion that Smiley was right behind him with a screen around his neck, Minnie-Mae right behind Smiley with a dented pot and the law behind all waving a billy three feet long.

Dove didn’t stop for breath till he’d rounded four corners and saw no one was following after all.

‘Reckon I do take things a mite hard,’ he thought, getting his buckle fastened at last. ‘Still, it do seem a great curiosity, how some boys rise so easy while others got to struggle so and lose their shoes in the struggle. Sometimes I almost think it’d be money in my pocket if I’d never been born.’

Back on the corner of Calhoun and Magnolia he rested on the curb and sat looking at the day. It was a mighty nice day and people looked friendly.

‘I reckon I ought to start lookin’ for work,’ he thought.

‘Don’t run, goodbuddy,’ a towering shadow advised him. Craning his neck about, Dove saw the long Floridan and the half-pint Georgian.

‘Don’t need to run, goodbuddy,’ the Georgian assured him, ‘we on
your
side now.’

‘Been on your side from the very start as a matter of fact.’

‘Too plumb beat to run anyhow,’ Dove abandoned hope. Then saw that each bore a yellow shoe. He eyed both shoes with distaste. ‘Them durn things have nigh to destroy me,’ he decided, ‘and they squeak like a new saddle besides.’

‘Man owns shoes as proud as these might one day try socks,’ the long Floridan commented as he shod Dove’s outsized left foot – ‘soap ’n water wouldn’t hurt none either,’ he reflected, handing the right shoe to the Georgian.

‘Caint even tell how many toes on this one,’ the smaller man marveled as he shod the right, ‘but it looks like it left six tracks in the barnyard. What part of the graveyard you sleep in last night?’

‘Tried a hotel but the air was so close I just roamed till sun-up, like a bug on a hot night.’

‘Plenty room at our place,’ the big man offered his hand while his voice rumbled like a bumblebee in a dry gourd. ‘My name is Luther but call me Fort, account Fort Myers is my home town.’

‘Mah name’s Luther too,’ the little one offered a firmer grip, ‘jest call me Luke.’

‘Like the bullet said to the trigger,’ Dove introduced himself, ‘Just tell me where to go.’

‘Did you have a little trouble back there with our friend?’ Fort asked while they crossed Canal at Tchoupitoulas.

‘If folks hadn’t pulled me off I’d have whupped him before he could of got word to God. I was just preparen to feather into him.’

‘That would have served him right, too,’ Fort agreed, ‘he’s the kind whose pappy made his way by driving his niggers and now he’s trying to make his by driving whites. He’s picked up a bit of Yankee philosophy – you don’t work you don’t eat. No true Southern man would never put a choice like that to a fellow human, black or white.’

Up a rickety backstair Fort pulled the string on a sixty-watt bulb. A room filled with a watery light, and mosquitoes buzzed in from the river. Dove saw a sink full of dirty dishes and a high brass bed precisely like another he had seen in his lost long-ago.

‘I’ll make out on the floor,’ he offered.

‘Aint needful,’ the Georgian pulled a curtain aside to disclose a cot in a sloping alcove. An empty gin-fifth rested there, uncorked, unlabeled and unclaimed: a bottle without a name. Luke tossed it at the screen, which parted politely to let it through, then closed quietly again. The bottle crashed below.

‘Who’s throwing things?’ Fort, in the other room, sounded startled.

‘Some nigger drunk pitchin’ glassware,’ Luke replied lightly.

‘Ought to be lawed,’ Fort decided firmly.

‘In my part of the country we don’t law them,’ Luke boasted.

‘We aint in your part of the country,’ Fort pointed out. ‘Got the rent up?’

‘It’s three-thirty a week for the set of us,’ Luke explained as if the question had been asked of Dove.

‘That comes to one-ten a week,’ Fort broke the figure down for everybody present.

‘Agreeable to me,’ Dove accepted the alcove and went to try out his cot. ‘I don’t suppose you fellows got a yaller yam to spare?’