Of Love and Dust (11 page)

I looked at Snuke Johnson and he was looking worried.

“What’s the matter?” I said.

“We got to get back,” he said. “I got to take Josie them three cases of beer for the fair.”

“Fuck Josie,” Burl said.

Jack Claiborn laughed. “You fuck her. I want Ethel.”

“You going or I’m going?” Burl asked.

“You go,” Jack said. “You pulled the first trey.”

“Come here, woman, let me give you li’l satisfaction,” Burl said to the woman he had been talking to.

So Burl went in and stayed about an hour, and all that time Snuke Johnson was looking worried. Then Jack went in and stayed his hour and Snuke Johnson was looking even more worried. When Jack came out everybody was waiting for Snuke to go in. Everybody could see how bad Snuke’s little yellow, bad hair woman wanted to go in. Then Snuke got up and went in with her, but about fifteen minutes later they came out. In all my days I’ve never seen a more hurting look on anybody’s face like I saw on Snuke Johnson’s woman’s face when she came out of that room. Most women try to hide it when things don’t go well, but Snuke’s woman didn’t care if the whole world knew.

It was about nine when we left the women, and by the time we got the beer from the store and got back to the quarter it was close to ten. Snuke was bitching all the way back. He said he knew Josie was going to be mad. But it wasn’t his fault, he said. He said Burl, Jack and I were to blame.

When we passed the big gate, I looked over the yard and I saw a lantern hanging outside the crib. So Marcus was still there.

“What’s Bonbon trying to do, kill him off in one week?” Jack Claiborn asked.

“Trying to break him,” I said.

“He’ll do it, too,” Jack said.

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” I said.

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The quarter has two house fairs every Saturday night. Mrs. Laura Mae gives one up the quarter and Josie Henderson gives one down the quarter. Mrs. Laura Mae’s fair is quiet and orderly. She doesn’t have any music, and only good people—usually Christians—go there. Her food is better than Josie’s food—her pralines, her cookies, her gumbo—and I think she even gives you more for your money. Still, most of the people go to Josie’s fair because Josie’s got music. She’s even got an old loud-speaker hung up on the gallery so you can hear the music all over the plantation. Josie’s got another room for gambling, and still another room with a bed for—well, you can guess for what. Josie is the only single person on the plantation, woman or man, who’s got a whole house to herself. According to the people in the quarter, Bonbon had something to do with that, too. He was getting a cut out of everything Josie was bringing in.

Just like any other night, the quarter was pitch-black. And in that blackness we could hear the music coming from Josie’s house fair. That old loud-speaker was all worn out and that music had a gritty sound, but still it brought the people there.

When we got down to Josie’s, the place was crowded,
noisy and hot. Everybody in the front was dancing. Snuke, Jack Claiborn, and I had the beer. Burl didn’t have anything; he was walking behind Jack. Josie was in the kitchen when we first came in, but before we got halfway across the room she was in there where we were. Josie was short and stocky and she was strong as a man. She could curse like hell, too. She pushed her way toward us, looking straight at Snuke Johnson. She was sweating and you could see she was mad. I thought Snuke was going to drop that case of beer and run.

“That beer better be cold,” Josie said.

“No, it’s—”

Josie started trembling like she wanted to hit Snuke with her fist. I could see her mouth trembling.

“You rotten sonofabitch,” she said. “You rotten—where the hell you been, Snuke Johnson?”

“I didn’t know—”

“You just a lying sonofabitch,” Josie said. She still wanted to hit him with her fist. “I told you I was low on beer. I told you I wanted that beer back before sundown. I told you that.”

“I’m—”

Then she moved closer to Snuke Johnson and started sniffing. She was sniffing like a dog on a hot trail—going, “Sniff, sniff, sniff.”

“What’s that I smell?” she said. But she didn’t wait for Snuke to answer. She moved right up to me and started sniffing, then she moved right up to Jack and started sniffing at him. She looked at Burl but she didn’t go to him; she went back to Snuke.

“So that’s it,” she said. “That’s why you couldn’t get back—”

“I don’t know what you talking ’bout,” Snuke said. “You ain’t smelling no more than that gumbo—”

“What you say?” she said real quickly. She wanted to hit Snuke so bad she was trembling. I supposed the only reason she didn’t hit him, she didn’t want him dropping that case of beer. “What you say, Snuke Johnson? What you say?” she said.

“Nothing,” Snuke said. Snuke was sweating now.

“Yeah, you said something,” Josie said. “What you say ’bout my food?”

Snuke didn’t answer her. She stood there looking at him, still trembling. Her mouth was trembling.

“Give me that goddamn beer here,” she said, jerking the case out of Snuke’s hands and rattling the bottles. “You can go back and find that whore again if you want. You, you put that case on here,” she said to me.

“I’ll take it in the kitchen, Josie,” I said.

“Put it on here,” she said.

“I’ll take it for you, Josie.”

“Put it on here,” she hollered at me.

“All right,” I said, setting it on the other case in her hands.

She went to Jack Claiborn.

“Give me that case of beer,” she said.

“Go on, Josie,” Jack said. “You got ’nough. You want a rupture?”

“Put that goddamn beer on here,” she said, “before I set the rest of these cases down and kick your ass.”

“Here,” Jack said, dropping the case real hard on the others.

Josie turned with the three cases of beer and staggered a little, but she was able to make it back into the kitchen. I went back there a couple minutes later. The kitchen was blazing hot. You could smell nothing but fried fish and gumbo back there. Josie was on her knees, putting the last few bottles of beer in a tub of ice. I offered to help her but
she wouldn’t let me. So I went over to the window to stand in the fresh air.

“I woulda thought you knowed better,” she said. “You starting to act just like the rest of them round here.”

“It probably slipped his mind, Josie,” I said. “You ran completely out?”

“I been out since eight o’clock and people been begging and begging for beer,” Josie said. “I told him I was go’n run out. I told him hurry back. Hell, if he didn’t want do it he ought to been said it.”

“He just forgot, Josie,” I said.

“Forgot hell,” she said, getting up off her knees. “I can smell him a mile. You, too.”

“All right,” I said. “How about some gumbo. And how about a beer—a Coke to go with it.”

Josie was near the stove when I mentioned the word “beer.” She stopped and looked at me, trembling a little.

“Don’t play with me, no, James,” she said. “Don’t play with me now.”

“I’m sorry, Josie,” I said. “I meant Coke.”

“I’m warning you,” she said, still trembling a little. “I ain’t in no playing mood.”

“I’m sorry, Josie,” I said.

She went on and dished me up a big bowl of gumbo and rice, and I stood at the window, eating. The gumbo was so hot with pepper it set the roots of your hair on fire. I drank two bottles of Coke, but the Coke didn’t do any good. It made that gumbo even hotter.

When I got through eating I paid Josie and went in the front room where everybody was dancing. But it was too crowded in there and I pushed my way in the other room where the gambling was going on. There must have been a dozen people in there. Jocko Thompson was the house-man.
Jocko was short, heavy-set, with a big head and real kinky hair. His white shirt was unbuttoned and you could see the kinky hairs on his sweaty chest.

Black Ned was sitting on Jocko’s left side. Black Ned was black as his name. He was about twenty-five but he looked fifteen. He was one of those black people who was going to look fifteen until he was forty, then he was going to look twenty-one. Sun Brown was sitting next to Black Ned. Sun Brown wasn’t brown, he was yellow. He was tall, skinny and yellow. He wore a yellow straw hat that had a red and green band that had a little red feather stuck in it. Sun always kept his cards close to his face when he was gambling. The Aguillard brothers were there, too. Two of them were sitting at the table, three more were standing around. They were the five biggest cowards in Louisiana. Together they would gang you; catch one by himself, you could make him crawl a mile. Murphy Bacheron was the other man at the table. Murphy didn’t live on the plantation but he came there to gamble. Murphy was a big, barrel-chested, broad-shouldered, thick-necked, gravel-voice, derby-wearing man. He had been in so many fights, he had scars all over his face and neck. I supposed he had them all over his body, too. He was somewhere between fifty and sixty, but he was as much man as anybody thirty. You couldn’t make that whole Aguillard gang jump on Murphy.

“Johnson got back with that fucking beer?” Black Ned asked me.

“Yeah, but it’s hot.”

“Hot? What the fuck it’s hot for?”

“Because it’s not cold,” I said.

“Yeah?” Black Ned said, nodding his head. “You think you funny, don’t you, Kelly?”

“You want a card, boy?” Jocko Thompson asked him.

“Boy?” Black Ned said, looking from me to Jocko. “How big do men grow on this fucking plantation?”

“You want a card, boy?” Jocko said, looking at him like he hadn’t even heard him.

“What kind of fucking place is this, a man can’t even have a cold beer when he’s gambling? Black Ned said, ignoring Jocko Thompson because Jocko called him a boy. He let everybody wait on him a while before he looked at his cards. He rapped his knuckles on the table. “Hit me,” he said.

Jocko threw him a nine. That busted him. He threw his cards on the table and cursed again.

“Hit me,” Sun Brown said, real quiet-like.

Jocko Thompson threw him a four. Sun Brown brought the cards real close to his face.

“Play these,” he said.

Then he peeped around the cards at Jocko Thompson, then he peeped over the cards at me, then he looked closely at them again. I had to laugh to myself.

“Playing what I got,” the first Aguillard boy said.

“Hit me,” the other one said.

Jocko threw him a five.

“Play this,” he said, after he had looked at his cards again.

“Murphy?” Jocko asked.

“Play what I got,” Murphy said in his graveled voice.

“Seventeen,” Sun Brown said, showing his cards.

“I got seventeen,” the Aguillard boy said, showing his.

“Nineteen,” the other one said, spreading his cards out.

Murphy turned over two kings and raked in the money. He threw Jocko Thompson a quarter.

“You keep winning, don’t you, Murphy?” one of the standing Aguillard brothers said.

“Yeah,” Murphy said in his graveled voice. “You think you can change my luck?”

That was Tram who had spoke. He was the oldest; he was the leader of the gang. Murphy just sat there looking up at Tram. Murphy’s shirt was unbuttoned, too, and you could see that kinky hair on that big sweaty chest like a bunch of flies on a rain-drenched pecan tree.

“That fucking beer ain’t cold yet?” Black Ned said. “What the fuck Josie doing, setting on them bottles herself?”

“You want in?” Jocko Thompson asked me.

“No,” I said.

“Nobody go’n bite you, Kelly,” one of the sitting-down Aguillards said to me.

“I’m not scared of that, either,” I said.

“Where your convict friend at?” the other one asked me.

“Marcus?”

“Yeah. He the one.”

“He’s around,” I said.

“You mean round that crib up there, don’t you?”

Then all five of the Aguillards laughed. They thought it was the funniest thing they had ever heard of.

“Anybody in that back room?” Black Ned said. “A man can’t have a cold beer, he might as well fuck.”

“What, your fist?” one of the Aguillard brothers said.

“That’s your habit?” Black Ned said to him.

“Don’t get smart, boy,” one of the standing Aguillards said.

Black Ned took out his little snub-nosed thirty-eight and laid it on the table.

“Put that shit back in your pocket,” Jocko told him.

“Just want people round here to know I back up my word,” Black Ned said, putting the gun back.

“Somebody go’n make you eat that goddamn popgun one day,” one of the standing Aguillards said.

“Sure,” Black Ned said. “Kelly, go get me a beer, huh.”

“Get it yourself,” I said. “I’m no waiter.”

“Well, fuck you, nigger,” he said.

“Sure,” I said.

Jocko Thompson was dealing out the cards. Sun Brown was holding his close up to his face.

I stood there about half an hour, then I went out. Maybe I would get in the game later when it quieted down some, but I didn’t want any part of it now.

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