Read Ms. Etta's Fast House Online
Authors: Victor McGlothin
Ms. Etta's Fast House (12 page)
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he following evening, Ms. Etta's Fast House was half empty, mostly due to an article written on the front page of the
Comet
newspaper. It warned the Negro citizens to stay off the streets until tempers calmed on both sides of the color lines. Etta knew it was the smart thing to do although it hit her where it hurt, in the cash register. “Looks like it'll be another slow one tonight,” she told Penny, as they took the opportunity to inventory her stock of bourbon, whiskey and rum behind the bar.
he following evening, Ms. Etta's Fast House was half empty, mostly due to an article written on the front page of the
Comet
newspaper. It warned the Negro citizens to stay off the streets until tempers calmed on both sides of the color lines. Etta knew it was the smart thing to do although it hit her where it hurt, in the cash register. “Looks like it'll be another slow one tonight,” she told Penny, as they took the opportunity to inventory her stock of bourbon, whiskey and rum behind the bar.
“Yes, ma'am, I expect it'll be this way until the fellas get good and settled into that police training,” Penny replied, after giving it much thought. “City folk sho' can be mean as rattlesnakes when things go changing on them.”
“That's the problem. Change has a way of scaring them something awful. Things staying the same, now that frightens the hell out of me.”
Penny wasn't sure exactly what that meant so she went right back to counting bottles and tallying the stock, until Henry came strolling through the door behind M.K. and Delbert. Henry's dark colored Stetson hat was tilted down so far that Penny barely saw his eyes. “Ms. Etta,” she said softly. “Someone's here to see you.” Etta raised her head from the clipboard she'd been writing on, then cast a subtle glance at Penny, suggesting that she find somewhere else to be. “Yes, ma'am,” the girl replied before stepping away from the bar area. “I'll wait a while and bring in another case or two.”
Without acknowledging Penny's comment, Etta primped her hair with a flat palm and straightened her royal blue evening gown. Despite the low customer turnout, she had a reputation to maintain as one of the classiest dressers in town. Etta blushed right off and tried to hide the surprise her eyes couldn't conceal. “Hey, Henry. I imagined you'd be home preparing for your first day of training tomorrow.”
“Jo Etta,” he said somberly, with both hands inside the pockets of his brown suit slacks. “I didn't mean to bother your bookkeeping none.”
Etta's heart fluttered beneath the fancy undergarments she'd ordered all the way from New York City. “Oh, it's all right,” she replied. The way she batted her eyes made Henry uncomfortable.
“Mind if we go in the office a spell?”
“Sure, I'll just get Gussy to come up and tend the bar. Not that there's been much call for it lately.”
“That's what I want to talk with you about,” Henry said, in an anxious manner. He was married, after all, and publicly flapping his gums with the only other woman he'd had real feelings for.
Once they were both behind closed doors, Henry took off his hat and laid it on her office desk. He paced back and forth slowly with his gaze locked on the hardwood floor beneath him. Etta knew his heart was heavy for a number of reasons. One of which, stemmed from the lack of courage it took for him to tell her that he was getting married. Now, it appeared he was having the same issue again. Only this time it was more important than skipping out on a love affair to run off with someone else. This time, it was a life and death situation. “I was on my way home from getting the police chief to change his mind about sending Willie B. packing,” he said eventually. “I told him that this lawyer got all of the white people off by citing it a matter of self-defense, so the same should apply to colored folk. Still can't believe he bought it.”
While Etta digested the good news about one of Henry's former teammates, she shrugged. “But that's not why you came by here, is it?”
“You always did know when my shirttail was hanging out.”
“Uh-huh, and tucked it in a time or two if I do recall.” She was still so much in love with him but the thought of what Henry did to her made her put on a straight face and fly right. “Though now, you got somebody else to do that for you, so what is it you want from me?”
Henry kicked at the floor with the tip of his pointed-toe shoes like there was a pebble he'd decided to roll around under it. “Hell, I may as well come out with it since it's killing me. Etta, look, you got to find a way to talk Baltimo' into leaving town. I've been around those boys in blue and they'd just as likely toss his black ass all the way to China if they knew what he was up to.”
“Do you know what he's up to? âCause I sure don't,” she answered curtly. “He's a grown man and if I do recollect, him and you done some pretty bad things together not so long ago.”
After choking back on what he wanted to say, Henry heaved out with a thick measure of anxiety, “Ain't neither him nor you's gone let me forget that, huh? I can forgive him but you ought to know better.”
“Me?” she yelled hysterically. “Well, ain't that a kick in the pants? I know you didn't bring your tired, broke ass into my establishment tryna tell me about forgiveness! You ought'n to know better. Henry, that man you all bent on forgetting so fast done saved your miserable life more times than once and I was thankful that he never ran out on you. I was a fool to be wasting my worries over at the hospital thinking some cracker done split your head wide open. Now, I'm sorry one of them didn't. You could use somebody smacking some sense into you.”
“I'm aiming to save Baltimo', Etta. That's why I came here,” he fussed.
“Shut up!” she spat, slapping his face with her open hand. “You don't deserve to say his name. Get out and don't set foot back in here again, Henry Taylor. You ain't welcome no more.”
Henry grabbed his hat and snatched at the door knob. He did what he thought was right, and it probably was the sensible thing to do, but he'd had that slap coming ever since he sneaked up and became someone else's husband on the sly. That notion shot through his mind as he opened the door but it quickly faded when Gussy blocked it with his immense frame. “Jo Etta, you'd want to tell this man to step aside before I have to make him.”
“It's okay, Gus,” she answered. “He was just leaving.” As the weighty bartender backed off, Henry marched past him with lengthy strides.
Penny had also heard the yells that emanated from inside the small office. She knew how Etta felt about Henry in the past, but now she didn't know what to think. To make matters worse, Baltimore was coming in as Henry exited. The two men ran smack into each other at the front entrance.
“Watch out where you's going, slave catcher!” Baltimore grunted viciously.
“You need to let that old stuff go, Baltimore,” Henry fired back. “I ain't gone crease, not now, not ever.” When he stood his ground, most of the few patrons scattered to safe distances, fearing that a fight was certain to catch fire.
“Ah-ha, you talk big now that you got both of your feet steady on the floor. It was a different story when I pulled you off that hangman's wagon when those Mississippi boys was about to run you up a pole. Or how about the time those Kansas City bluecoats was aiming to hand you over for murder?” As soon as Baltimore unfastened his jacket, Etta lodged herself between the two brooding men. “Clear as I can tell, you don't do nothing but crease.”
“That's enough!” Etta shouted.
“I'm sick and tired of living that way too,” Henry argued, with saliva mounting in the corners of his mouth. “I'm through going up against the law and I'm through being a shiftless niggah. I done had my fill of that!”
“Beat it, Henry, and don't come back,” shouted Etta. “Don't you come back here, never!”
Penny was so scared that her hands trembled over her mouth, especially when Baltimore followed Henry outside onto the sidewalk. “Go on and git, slave catcher!” he howled. “They ain't gone let you wrestle in no white boys, just colored criminals and runaway dogs. They should've had you take the dog catcher test!” Before walking back inside the night spot, he swallowed hard, tasting what had occurred and dreading what was to come. “Damn,” he said under his breath, glad he didn't pull his gun and pop Henry like the cocky stranger he'd become.
Damn.
Damn.
M.K. and Delbert had both observed the verbal altercation between old friends. When Baltimore re-entered the Fast House, the fellows waved him over to join them. “Here, Baltimore, drink this,” M.K. offered, shoving Delbert's glass of ice water in his face. “You need to cool off.”
“I need something a mite stronger than that,” Baltimore declared, seeing Delbert and Ollie seated at the same table. “Gussy, get me a bottle of that stuff I had the other night.”
“Since when did you start trying your luck at handling liquor?” M. K. queried, not believing his eyes or ears.
“Since the other night, about the same time hell started to freeze,” he answered, with sorrow glazing his pupils.
Etta nodded reluctantly to Gussy that it was okay, despite remembering how badly it turned out for Baltimore the last time he settled down with a bottle to contemplate life. “Yes, ma'am, if you say so,” Gussy replied, with a mouthful of pessimism. “Here we go again.”
Penny hadn't been off the farm any time to speak of and she'd already found herself learning more about human nature than she had in all of her years following behind her papa. It just so happened that Baltimore's hotel bedroom backed up to the Fast House. One night, Penny overheard two people getting after it from an open upstairs window. Since it was dark inside the hotel room he'd rented, she couldn't see a thing, but the sounds of a woman getting everything she needed from a man filled the night air like a heated jam session. Penny listened intently until she fell asleep with her face pressed against a box of bar napkins. The next morning, she saw Dinah sitting on Baltimore's windowsill smoking something that smelled funny, something she'd rolled herself. Penny thought Dinah's wailing and carrying on sounded about as much like pain as it did joy, but seeing as how she'd been back twice afterwards, it appeared joy kept winning out. Subsequently, as Penny caught another view of Baltimore, she was able to see his passions run wild in the other direction. She wasn't willing to bet on it, but if she had to guess she'd say he'd killed men for less than the way Henry hurt him, much less.
“All right then, that's more like it,” M.K asserted uneasily, as he made an attempt toward restoring normalcy. “Baltimore, you remember the carnival we broke in down south. I was just telling Ollie and Delbert what a time we had that weekend. Go ahead and tell them, about the Birmingham twins.”
“I ain't stud'n no twins scam, M.K. I'm busy trying to make something outta myself.”
“Like what exactly? Something other than a shiftless niggah I hope?” he teased, using Henry's rants.
“Yeah, a
rich
shiftless niggah,” Baltimore jested, with a raised glass of whiskey.
rich
shiftless niggah,” Baltimore jested, with a raised glass of whiskey.
M.K. drank to that and made a number of other toasts for the sake of tying on a good one, after pulling an eighteen hour shift patching up cuts and wounds. He was willing to drink the night away if it meant getting Baltimore to agree on arranging another fixed beauty contest where the winners owed them personally on the back end. Having to tell the story himself, M.K. didn't leave anything out.
“Three years ago while blowing some money down in Alabama, Baltimore ran across a set of beautiful twenty-year-old twins at the supermarket. He bought a sack of beer and chips then went on back to their apartment. One of them wouldn't give up nothing because the other was watching, so he come and got me to even the odds, but by the time we got there, two other fellas had drank up all the beer and hemmed the girls in for the night. Not to be outdone, Baltimore told the man at a carnival booth that he was sponsoring a prettiest twins contest for women ages nineteen to ninety. The man running the show thought it was a good enough idea, so he worked it up and cleared over three hundred dollars in popcorn and pickle sales while people stood around looking the girls over and voting. Just before the ballots were counted, I snuck around back and dumped them in a trash bin, then I stuffed the boxes to put in the fix. After the carnival closed, me and Baltimore spent all night with the winning contestants, two lovely burlesque dancers who couldn't thank us enough, even though they were still trying to when the sun came up.”
After a few more drinks and exaggerations thrown in on the side, Baltimore did come around to seeing M.K.'s point about twinning and winning. Delbert was simply glad to be among men with something on their minds other than bandages and bumps and bruises. He'd seen his share of those to last him a long while. What Delbert wanted was his first female conquest. Twins wouldn't have been a bad start although getting his kicks with two women was more than any man could hope for on his first time out of the gate.
While stumbling back to the residence's quarters after hours of drinking and trading tales about lascivious living, Delbert needled M.K. for his wild stories about loose women, especially a particular pair he'd mentioned earlier. Ollie didn't object because he was looking to get his hands on a pair of identical beauties himself after hearing all about it. “O.K., but this is the last time. Now there I was, waiting for the carnival man to announce the winning contestants. Phyllis, she had the biggest titties of the two, I think, was standing up on that bandstand grinning and waving those melons at me. I had to tighten my belt to keep my pecker in my pants. But when I got her alone that night, I set it free and then went looking for her sister Mildred in the next room, only Baltimore had already ground her down to nothing and sent her off to sleep. Oh, man, we did some wild things then,” he reminisced.
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