Freshwater Road (37 page)

Shuck had become a junkie for Mississippi news. In the low light at the back
of the Royal Gardens, he foraged through the Detroit News, the Michigan
Chronicle, and his jet magazine, searching for any mention of Mississippi.
He checked his watch for the start of the six o'clock news on television.
Seemed like every time he turned it on, somebody else was dead. A president, four little girls in a church, a Negro man walking to his front door,
a crazy white man walking down a road alone in Alabama with a sign
protesting segregation. Now it was those three boys.

The regulars came in and took their seats, Millicent and Iris at the bar
fanning themselves with folded pieces of paper though the air conditioner
chugged and the ceiling fans whirled. Shuck nodded to them, his eyes
seeing them but his mind unable to focus on them.

Rodney and Chink lumbered in, sweat trickling down their faces,
looking more like the tail end of a chain gang than two men with good
jobs at the General Motors plant. Posey had their drinks ready before
they settled in at their table just beyond the bar; he put in lots of ice,
automatically gave every customer ice water, kept the ice machine on all
day until the sound of the cubes clunking down into the refrigerator and
the new water pouring into the ice-maker became part of the tracks of
sound in the Royal Gardens. Shuck grunted towards Chink and Rodney,
then his eyes glazed. If the government had any backbone, it would've
protected those children from jump street. That was the thought on everyone's mind.

Posey went to the big Wurlitzer and clattered in the coins to play the
music Shuck loved, Ellington and Basie, Sinatra and Vaughn, and always
Dakota Staton-steering clear of Billie Holiday because her voice revealed
too much of what everyone hoped to forget. In the middle of Dakota Staton
singing "Broadway," Shuck caught his own distracted face in the bar mirror,
mumbled to Posey, "Be back later on," and walked by Chink and Rodney's
table, their heads slow-turning to watch him go, behind Iris and Millicent
at the bar, who had words ready for him but something in his face caught
them, stopped them from speaking. He was gone.

Shuck drove all over the city like an angler looking for a catch on a wide
still lake. Quiet. He made his way to the old neighborhood, turned onto
Milford, a kind of West Side main street leaning toward decay but still
anchored by churches and small family-owned businesses. Milford lived in
Shuck, as if he and it were the same thing. He'd been born a few blocks from
here, knew this place like he knew all the ways a number could be played,
what number attached to every dream in the dream book. He learned the
numbers game on Milford at the barbershop and the shoe shine stand.
In the afternoons, he'd sit at Momma Bessie's dining room table writing
his numbers from memory on the policy slips he refused to carry in the
car for fear of being stopped by the police. He stashed the carbon copies
in a Florsheim shoebox and secreted them in the cellar behind the jars of
canned fruits and vegetables, then paid off the police as insurance. Late in
the day, the phone rang off the hook as the numbers fell, coming off the
racetrack-first, second, and third race. He covered his bets and played it
straight. He moved up from runner to banker.

When he opened his eyes, he was parked on the side street near Manfred's after-hours joint and took a moment to remember that he'd parked
there after cruising around the old neighborhood, passing by the homes
of people who used to be his clients. Manfred's didn't post any signs. You
had to know the entrance was down a short alley between two squat buildings on a small commercial stretch in the old neighborhood. It was dark,
homespun, and illegal, a real blind pig that never even opened to the public
before ten. Night people ended their days tipping out of Manfred's just
before sunrise. It was too early for Manfred's to be busy. Next to the Royal
Gardens, Manfred's had the best jukebox in town.

"Hey Shuck, howyou been doing?" Ulster "Gravy" Williams, slouching
his drunk self at a corner table in the shadows, sat up straight and wobble walked over to the stool beside Shuck's at the bar. Gravy had a reputation
for being slick in an obvious sort of way.

"Gravy. Things are fine, just fine." If anybody else asked him how he'd
been doing, he would've asked the same question back. With Gravy, you
didn't even need to ask because the answer was coming regardless. Shuck
nodded to Manfred, then looked straight ahead at the sparkling glasses
and honey-toned liquids in the whiskey bottles lined up in front of the bar
mirror. Manfred brought Shuck a shot of Crown Royal with a glass of ice
water. He'd been doing the same thing every time Shuck walked in the
place for years. Manfred rarely spoke but nodded, kept a black and chrome
stool behind the bar for the slow times and a .45 automatic pistol under a
towel by the cash register.

"Yeah, man, things good for me, too." Gravy settled on the stool, only
the top button on his long sleeved pink shirt open right under his stubbly
chin. "Don't see you around here anymore. Yo momma still live up the
street?"

"Yeah." Shuck knew better than to feed Gravy with tidbits from his life.

Gravy stared down at his nearly empty glass, a pitiful, hungry-dog look
on his face. "Nice, man, nice. Good thang to have yo momma still living
and healthy."

In fact, Momma Bessie wasn't that healthy anymore, but Shuck didn't
want to share that with him. Easy to see Gravy wanted another drink.
Shuck prayed Manfred would cut him off before Gravy fell out on the
floor. If he fell out, Shuck would have to take him home because Manfred
was there by himself. No way he was going to close down to drive a drunk
home. For Gravy, there was no one to call but a taxi.

"Damn sure is." Shuck said it with a finality that would have translated
clearly to anyone but a drunk.

Gravy pressed on. "Sorry to hear bout yo daddy passing. He was a
upright kinda man."

Old man Tyree had been dead for over a year. Gravy obviously didn't
know about the woman who'd turned up at the funeral knowing more
about Shuck than he knew about himself, how she'd stayed in the back of
the church and then cornered him when Momma Bessie stepped into the
first car for the ride to the cemetery. Momma Bessie finally stuck her head
through the car window, rolled her eyes good and hard at the woman, and
told Shuck to get in the car. All Shuck could do for days after was wonder how in God's name his own father had carried on with another woman
for years and never let on to a soul. He never had the heart to ask Momma
Bessie how much she knew. But that look said she knew something.

Gravy grinned like the last snake in the Garden of Eden. "How them
kids of yours?"

"They're fine, Gravy. Everybody's fine." Shuck emphasized it this time,
eyed Manfred, then walked to the jukebox.

Jackie Wilson finished "Lonely Teardrops," too loud without glasses
tinkling and rough-voiced men and women talking and laughing. Shuck
was in the mood for his music. He played "What a Diff'rence a Day Makes"
and "While We're Young," by Dinah Washington. He lingered at the glassfronted jukebox, pretending to study the other selections, hoping Gravy
would grow bored and leave. No such luck. He went back to finish his drink,
wishing he could move himself down the bar without being too obvious,
but Gravy had homed in on him.

"How's your daughter, man? She must be very near growed." Gravy
leaned into Shuck, his breath like a breeze from a garbage dump.

Shuck took a swig of Crown Royal that arced down his throat, searing
like it was the first drink he'd ever had, then lit a cigarette, blowing the
smoke sideways right into Gravy's face.

Gravy didn't even cough but seemed to suck in the smoke and get even
higher than he already was. "Man, I got a friend lives up there in Ann Arbor
say she saw your daughter, uh, what's her name?"

Shuck took out his handkerchief and blew his nose. He wasn't going
to help Gravy with so much as a name. He hummed a phrase, tapped his
cigarette lighter on the bar in time to the music.

Gravy slumped, eyed his empty glass, the top of the bar, checked his
dull fingernails. "My friend say your daughter was hanging out with a
white dude. On the back of a motorcycle. Close. She like them white
boys, huh?"

Shuck knew about the white boy. J.D. He'd warned Celeste all about the
downside of that kind of freedom. Nothing else he could do. Young people
had their own minds. Anyway, the white boy thing in Ann Arbor wasn't
going to kill Celeste. Mississippi might. Gravy was behind the times, as
usual. "I don't worry much about it, Gravy. She's got to live her own life."
He lied. He had worried about it. He prided himself on being a race man,
told his children they could find whatever they needed among their own people. But he let it go; he knew times were changing and that was all for
the best.

Gravy sat quietly absorbing Shuck's cool response. Shuck figured he
was sitting there scheming up on his next attack. He reached for his wallet,
ready to get away from Gravy, even though he could sit in Manfred's for
hours just listening to the jukebox. Before he got his money out, Gravy
caught his eyes in the bar mirror.

"Whole lot of people say that daughter of yours never did look like
you, man. You know what I mean? Look like something else going on
in there." He got the last words tangled and he trailed off as if he'd lost
contact with them.

Everything went quiet in the cavern inside Shuck's ears. Heat flashed to
his neck and face. His stomach twisted, feeling full of fury like hot rocks.
This was all so old, he was stunned by how new it felt. "No, Gravy, I don't
know what you mean."

"Nothing, man, nothing." Gravy turned away, tapped his bony fingers
on the bar top, slouched over even more.

Shuck took a deep drink then poured the Crown Royal into the water,
quickly bringing the glass to his mouth. He held it there when he wasn't
taking in any liquid. The diluted drink sailed into his blood like it was
hydroplaning down a shimmering highway. His hand began to shake, so
he brought the glass down to the bar top with a thud.

Gravy grinned a sheepish little grin, catching Shuck's eyes in the mirror
again, pretending to be trying to figure something out. He'd won. Shuck
slid some money out of his money clip, slapped it on the bar and stood up.
His cigarette hung by a tiny piece of white paper from the corner of his
mouth. "Fuck you, Gravy. Check you later, Manfred."

He walked out knowing he'd come close to crashing his glass into
Gravy's face. Didn't ever want to hit a drunk. And knew better than to listen to whatever came out of a drunk man's mouth. The street was desolate,
warm and still.

Shuck flicked his cigarette to the ground, then sat in the car, watching
the tiny round crinkle of fire burn. Maybe it was good Celeste didn't come
home for the summer. He'd never be able to talk about that old rumor
anyway. Too much time gone by. What difference did it make now? The
old rumor had died down in time. Wilamena left the city. That put an end
to it, or so he'd thought. More than once, he'd been tempted to ask Alma if she'd ever heard the rumors. She'd never so much as hinted that she had.
Best to leave it that way.

Posey knew, or thought he knew. The old-timers who might've heard
it had always been cowed, charmed, and cajoled away from the wormy
past without a clear word being spoken. It was the way he was with his
children. No room for speculation. The regulars at the bar were too young
to have even heard about it. Always in the back of his mind, he worried
that someone would say something to Celeste, someone would dig up the
old bones. In truth, he was never sure what the old bones really were. He'd
only guessed some variation ofwhatever the truth was, but he'd always been
a good guesser. He knew he could never rely on Wilamena for a straight,
bottom-line answer. Her truth was always her own private blanket, and
she didn't share.

He really didn't know what other people imagined when they looked
at him and his daughter. He didn't much care. The one who'd wounded
him way back was Wilamena. He'd forgiven her long ago, because he knew
he'd been no kind of husband in those days. He was in the streets just like
she complained. He was a young man without purpose. She left him, left
him with their two children, and he grew up. By then, she was gone and
Celeste was his. He didn't know the truth but he suspected. It made no
difference now.

Mrs. Owens must have been standing on the porch because as soon as the
dust-roiling Dodge stopped, the screen door swung open, and she was moving down the steps, the path, her apron flipping up from her dress, hands
in supplication, moving like a woman half her age through the flush pink
and graying light of early evening. "They out trying to find her," she called.
Her eyes searched inside the car.