Red-Dirt Marijuana: And Other Tastes (3 page)

“Heck, don’t you think I know better than to do that?”

“You ain’t scared though, is you Hal?”

Harold spat.

“Shoot,” he said, looking away, as though in exasperation and disgust that the thought could have occurred to anyone.

C.K. resumed his work, rolling the cigarettes, and Harold watched him for a few minutes and then stood up, very straight.

“I reckon I could git a fruit-jar outta the cellar,” he said, “if she ain’t awready brought ’em up for her cannin’.”

“That sho’ would be fine, Hal’,” said C.K., without raising his head, licking the length of another thin stick of it.

When Harold came back with the fruit-jar and the empty shell-box, they transferred the two piles into those things.

“How come it’s against the
law
if it’s so all-fired good?” asked Harold.

“Well, now, I use to study ’bout that myself,” said C.K., tightening the lid of the fruit-jar and giving it a pat. He laughed. “It ain’t because it make young boys like you
sick,
I tell you
that
much!”

“Well, what the heck is it then?”

C.K. put the fruit-jar beside the shell-box, placing it neatly, carefully centering the two just in front of him, and seeming to consider the question while he was doing it.

“I
tell
you what it is,” he said then, “it’s ’cause a man
see
too much when he git high, that’s what. He see right
through
ever’thing . . . you understan’ what I say?”

“What the heck are you talkin’ about, C.K.?”

“Well, maybe you too young to know what I talkin’ ’bout—but I tell you they’s a lotta trickin’ an’ lyin’ go on in the world . . . they’s a lotta ole
bull-crap
go on in the world . . . well, a man git high, he see right through all them tricks an’ lies, an’ all that ole bull-crap. He see right through there into the
truth
of it!”

“Truth of
what?
”

“Ever’thing.”

“Dang you sure talk crazy, C.K.”

“Sho’, they
got
to have it against the law. Shoot, ever’body git high, wouldn’t be nobody git up an’ feed the chickens! Hee-hee . . . ever’body jest
lay in bed!
Jest lay in bed till they
ready
to git up! Sho’, you take a man high on good gage, he got no use for they ole bull-crap, ’cause he done see right through there. Shoot, he lookin’ right down into his ver’
soul!
”

“I ain’t never heard nobody talk so dang crazy, C.K.”

“Well, you young, boy—you goin’ hear plenty crazy talk ’fore you is a growed man.”

“Shoot.”

“Now we got to think of us a good place to
put
this gage,” he said, “a
secret
place. Where you think, Hal?”

“How ’bout that old smoke-house out back—ain’t nobody goes in there.”

“Shoot, that’s a
good
place for it, Hal’—you sure they ain’t goin’ tear it down no time soon?”

“Heck no, what would they tear it down for?”

C.K. laughed.

“Yeah, that’s right,” he said, “well, we take it out there after it gits dark.”

They fell silent, sitting there together in the early afternoon. Through the open end of the shed the bright light had inched across the dirt floor till now they were both sitting half in the full sunlight.

“
I
jest wish I knowed or not you daddy goin’ to work on that south-quarter
fence
today,” said C.K. after a bit.

“Aw, him and Les Newgate went to
Dalton
,” said Harold, “. . . heck, I bet they ain’t back ’fore dark.” Then he added, “You wanta go fishin’?”

“Shoot, that sound like a
good
idee,” said C.K.

“I seen that dang drum-head jumpin’ on the west side of the pond again this mornin’,” said Harold, “. . . shoot, I bet he weighs seven or eight pounds.”

“
I
think we do awright today,” C.K. agreed, glancing out at the blue sky and sniffing a little, “. . . shoot, we try some calf-liver over at the second
log—
that’s jest where that ole drum-head
is
’bout now.”

“I reckon we oughtta git started,” said Harold. “I guess we can jest leave that dang stuff here till dark . . . we can stick it back behind that fire-wood.”

“Sho’,” said C.K., “we stick it back in there for the time bein’—I think I jest twist up one or two more ’fore we set out though . . . put a taste of this heavy in ’em.” He laughed as he unscrewed the lid of the fruit-jar. “Shoot, this sho’ be fine for fishin’,” he said. “. . . ain’t nothin’ like good gage give a man the strength of patience—you want me to twist up a couple for
you
, Hal’?”

Harold spat.

“Aw I guess so,” he said finally, “. . . you let
me
lick ’em though, dangit, C.K.”

T
HE CRAP-GAME STARTED
at two o’clock that afternoon, when C.K. Crow walked into the Paradise Bar with a bottle of Sweet Lucy in one hand and $6 in the other. The white boy, Harold, was with him. “Smart nigger can double his money
quick
,” said C.K., “if he think I ain’t comin’ out on . . . w
ham!
” and he threw the dice. “. . . SEVEN!” Then he lay his head back laughing and tilted the bottle of wine.

The place was jumping—funky wailing blues and high wild laughter. “Crow suck that bottle like it a big stick of tea!”

“He do it like somethin’ else I think of too! Hee-hee! Lemme have a taste of that Lucy, boy!”

“You all
wise
do you celebratin’
’fore
you puts you money down,” said C.K., “’cause you sho’ goin’ be cryin’ the blues
after
. . . where them dice!” Old Wesley stood leaning behind the bar, picking his teeth with a matchstick. “Drink of this establishment not
good
enough for you, Mistah Crow, that you got to bring you own bottle in here?”

“Never mind that, my man,” said C.K., wiping his mouth, “you establishment don’t carry drink of this particular quality.” He slapped a quarter on the bar. “Gimme a glass.”

Old Wesley put a large water-glass on the bar.

“Who you young frien’ over there?” he asked, with a nod of mock severity at Harold, who hung back near the wall.

“An’ my young frien’ there have a
coke
,” said C.K., looking around at Harold as though he might have forgotten about him. “Ain’t that right, boy?”

“Aw I guess so,” said Harold, sullen, looking away, but aware of the two laughing together now.

In the Negro bar, C.K. affected an exaggerated superiority over the boy which, though it might sometimes be annoying, Harold didn’t resent because he never felt enough a part of the situation to be vulnerable. He had been coming into the Paradise Bar with C.K. for about a year now, whenever they’d be sent to town in the old pickup to get feed, fence-wire, or whatever it happened to be. C.K. had started this thing of stopping off at the Paradise by saying that he wanted to call on some of
his people
, as long as he and Harold were in town, and this had first involved their crossing over into a section that was known on maps, town-records, and the like, as West Central Tracks, but was in fact spoken of simply as “Nigger Town”—and then driving through the absurdly bumpy labyrinth of dust and lean-to shacks, outside which great charred wash-pots steamed in the Texas sun above raging bramble-fires. Negroes sat hunched along the edge of ramshackle front-porches, making slow crazy-looking marks in the dust with a stick or gazing, with equal inscrutableness, at the road in front of them—driving through, and finally pulling in with the pickup, right into the dirt frontyard of one of these shacks.

Then at last they would be in the dark interior itself, seemingly windowless, smelling of kerosene and liniment, red-beans and rice, cornbread, catfish, and possum-stew; and Harold would sit in the corner with a glass of water given him and maybe a piece of hot cornbread, while C.K. sat at the table, in the yellow glow of the oil-lamp, eating, always eating, forever dipping the cornbread into a bowl, head lowered in serious eating, but laughing too, and above all, saying things to make the big woman laugh, she who stood, or sat, watching him eat, his aunt, cousin, girl-friend, Harold never knew which, nor cared. And after, on the way out of the section they would stop again, at the Paradise Bar, so that C.K. could “see a friend,” while Harold, saying, “Goddang it, C.K., we can’t fool around here all day,” waited in the pickup, drinking a coke and eating a piece of hot barbecued-chicken or spare-ribs that C.K. had brought out to him. Then he too had taken to going inside, tentatively at first, either to get C.K. out of there or to get another coke for himself, only then perhaps to linger in watching the crap-game a while, or listening to Blind Tom sing the blues—so that in the end all pretense of calling on C.K.’s people or seeing a friend had been discarded; and whenever they were in town now, and had the time, they just drove straight over to the Paradise Bar and went in. And whereas Harold had in the beginning been merely bored by it all, even given a headache by the ceaseless swinging wail of the blues-guitar, and blistered lips from the barbecue so dredged in red-pepper that it brought both tears and sweat to his face, he had finally come to enjoy these interludes at the Paradise, or rather to take them for granted—sentiments which, in a boy of twelve, are perhaps interchangeable.

“Well, who is it now? Seth Stevens’ boy?”

Sitting on a stool next to the wall near where Harold stood was a blind Negro of about sixty; he was barefoot and was strumming a guitar in his lap, he who turned his face, smiling, toward the boy at the sound of his voice, asking “Who is it now? Seth Stevens’ boy?” And there was in this upturned face such a soft unearthly radiance as could have been startling—a wide extraordinarily open face, and the expanse of closed lids made it appear even more so, a face that when singing would sometimes contort as though in pain or anger, and yet when turning to inquire, as in waiting for the word, was lifted, smiling . . . even as in the way an ordinary man may cock his head to one side with a smile, this blind man would, but tilting his chin as well, so that with the light falling directly on his upturned face it seemed almost to be illuminated. It was an expression which on an ordinary person, would have resembled that kind of sweet Blakeian imbecility occasionally seen on faces along McDougal Street, but on this sightless Negro face now it appeared very close to being joyous.

“Who is it then? Hal’ Stevens?”

“Yeah, it’s Harold,” said the boy, laconic and restless—accepting, yet half uncertain whether or not it was all a waste of time. He sat down with his coke in an old straight chair next to the stool. “How
you
doin’, Blind Tom?”

“You voice begin to change, Hal’—I weren’t sure it were you. How’s you gran’daddy?”

“Aw he’s awright. He’s slowed down a lot though, I guess.”

Blind Tom always spoke as though Harold’s grandfather were still running their farm, even though the old man was eighty-seven now and had not been active for as long as Harold could remember. It was something which Harold had attempted to explain once, in one of their earliest conversations, and which Tom had seemed to understand, though gradually now the old notion had stolen back into his talk, and Harold no longer tried to dispel it.

“What kinda cotton you all goin’ to have out there this year, Hal’?”

“Aw I reckon it’ll be pretty good, Blind Tom—if the dang boll-weevils don’t git at it again.”

“What, he have some trouble with the weevil?”

“Aw they got into that south-quarter. Shoot, they ate up half-a-acre ’fore anybody knew it. We had to spray the whole dang crop.”

“Well, you gran’daddy ain’t lose no cotton-crop to the boll-weevil I tell you that!”

“Naw, we done sprayed it over now.”

“You
’member
me to you gran’daddy now, Hal’. He ’member Blind Tom Ransom. I picked a mighty lotta cotton out there.”

“I know you did, Blind Tom.”

“He git good hands out there now?”

“Aw they say they ain’t as good as they used to be—you know how they always say that.”

“I use to pick-a-bale-a-day. I pick seben-hunderd twenty-three pounds one day, dry-load. He was down to the wagon hisself to see it weighed out.
He
tell you. They
say
it ain’t never been beat in the county.”

“I know it, Tom.”

Leaning against the bar, C.K. was filling his glass, watching the bright red wine tumble into it.

“Big Nail back,” said Old Wesley.

“Is
that
so?” said C.K., and with such smiling astonishment that one might have known it was false.

“Sho’, he sittin’ right over there in the
corner—
you see him?”

“Well, so he is,” said C.K., partly turning around. “I
swear
I never seen him when I come
in!
” but he said this in such a laughing way, taking a big drink, too, that it was most apparent that he had.

“He lookin’ fit, ain’t he?” He laughed softly. “Old Big Nail,” he said, shaking his head as he turned back around. He refilled his half-full glass. “I likes to keep a full glass before me,” he explained to Wesley, “at
all
times.” He did a little dance-step then, holding on to the bar and looking down at his feet. “How’s business with
you
, Mr. Wesley?” he asked, coming back to his drink.

“ ’Bout the same as usual I reckon.”

“Oh? I would of said it was pickin’ up a little,” said C.K. smiling, looking at Big Nail. “Can’t complain,” said Wesley.

“Remind me I hear a funny story today,” said C.K., somewhat louder than before and half turning away from the bar; then he stopped to laugh, closing his eyes and lowering his chin down to his chest, shaking his head as though he were trying not to laugh at all.

“Oh yeah, it were ver’ funny.”

He had a loose uninhibited manner of telling a story, yet a certain restraint too, an almost imperceptible half-smile, as of modesty, even as if he himself were quite objectively aware of how very good a story it was.