South Street (9 page)

Brown roused as the door opened, coming off the couch as if someone had stuck him with a pin, taking the coffee table with him onto the floor as he hit the carpet in a low dive, sending a splash of diluted whiskey and half-melted ice against the wall. The glass and ice were scattered all over the floor. Brown ended up on his feet, poised in a crouch against the far wall.

“Adlai?”

Brown relaxed, straightened. “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Brown said. He came back across the room, pausing to retrieve the bottle, glass, and what was left of the ice cubes. He did not look up.

“Do what? What are
you
doing?” She stared at him. “Oh,” she said, drawing her lips tight, “I should have known.”

Brown straightened up and looked at her. “Should have known what?”

She laid her purse on a low table, put the paper on top of it. She removed her sunglasses and laid them on top the paper. “Should have known that when I got home I’d find you wrapped around a bottle like an alcoholic boa constrictor.”

“Hmmm,” Brown said. “‘Alcoholic boa constrictor.’ Not bad. Mind if I use it sometime? You know any words that rhyme with constrictor?”

“For you to use it, it couldn’t have more than four letters.”

Brown sighed and dropped onto the sofa. “You know, it’s getting so there’s only two things we do together any more, and they both start with
f
.”

“Fight and what else?” she said, and walked through to the bedroom.

“Ouch,” Brown said. He got up and went to stand in the bedroom doorway.

She stepped out of her panties and raised her head. “If you’re thinking that now is a good time to take issue with that slur on your heavy-hung black male virility, forget it.”

“God forbid,” Brown said. “God for
bid
I should touch your million-dollar Westchester County black middle-class ass, and that even rhymes, and do we
have
to do this?”

“Do you
have
to account for half the annual revenue of the local State Store?”

“It sounds,” Brown said carefully, “like you are informing me, in your oh-so-subtle
Ebony
Magazine’s Most Eligible Female way, that I drink too fucking much. I
know
I drink too fucking much.”

“And you say ‘fuck’ too much.”

“All right,” Brown said. “I say
fuck
too fucking much. Anything else?”

“You’re insensitive.”

Brown opened his mouth, closed it. “Jesus,” he muttered softly. “Jesus muthafuckin’ Christ.”

“Don’t you know any other words?” she demanded.

“How ’bout ‘cunt’?” She glared at him. “Sorry, missy,” Brown said. “Us darkies has got a limited vocabulary.”

“Don’t you start that,” she said. “I’m just as black as you are.”

“That,” Brown said, “is what frightens me.” He spun on his heel and went back into the living room.

She followed, wrapping a robe around her. “Are you clean?”

“What?” Brown said.

“Clean. Did you have a shower afterwards?”

“After what?” Brown said, smiling maliciously.

“After that ritual self-torture you put yourself, through every morning,” she said.

“It ain’t every morning,” Brown said. “Lately it’s been about once a month. Or did you mean the running?”

“I meant the running.”

“Oh,” Brown said. “Yeah, I took a shower after
that
.” He smiled. “Answer your question?”

“Maybe you’d better take another one,” she suggested.

“Why?”

“You’ll smell.”

“If I smell I got the smell from you. And Jesus knows
you
don’t smell. Hell, you got more damn sprays than the Agriculture Department.” Brown whirled and stalked back into the bathroom, jerked open the medicine cabinet. “Fuck, will you look at this shit. Perfume. Powder. Cream sachet. Underarm spray, foot spray, nose spray, ear spray, pussy spray,
and
douche. Strawberry flavored. Bet that would taste fine, ’cept anybody that tried to eat that oversprayed pussy a yours would probly die from DDT poisonin’ or somethin’. …”

“Do you
have
—”

“‘Do you
have
to talk that way?’” Brown mimicked. “No, I don’t have to talk that way. I know how to talk like nice people. Nice
white
people that wouldn’t be caught dead callin’ a spade a spade, ’less it happened to be a nigger.”

“Negro.”

“Black. Afro-American. Jungle bunny. Bullshit.” Brown slammed the medicine cabinet shut. “Missy, ah sho’ is sorry if ah smells a little musky. But that’s life. Now y’all up there to the big house wid Massa …”

“You had your share of the big house,” she snapped. “You’re still having it.”

“Wrong, baby,” Brown snapped. “I had more than’ my share. I had my fill.”

She looked at him speculatively. Brown stood rigidly against the sink, his jaw set. “Well,” she said calmly. “Anyway. You’d better get ready.”

“Ready for what?” Brown snapped.

“Earl’s party,” she said.

Brown looked at her.

“Massa’s gonna be there,” she said. “An’ he runs a poetry magazine. Were you drunk when I told you, or did you just forget?”

“I tried,” Brown said. He relaxed, sank down on the edge of the tub, buried his face in his hands for a minute, looked up at her. “I hate this,” Brown said. “Why do we do this?”

“Why do you do it?”

“Oh, fuck,” Brown said, and took cover in the shower.

Brother Fletcher stood on the stage of The Word of Life Church, looking out over the rows of empty theater seats. It had been a long Sunday, but now it was well into Monday morning, and Brother Fletcher longed for home, his wife, a glass of iced tea. Everyone else had gone to his home happy, renewed, his sins freshly forgiven, the soil prepared for a new crop. Brother Fletcher had stayed behind, tired, happy, and strangely confused. His thoughts were scattered. He had a slight headache. The Word of Life was to be his church, even if only temporarily. Someone had told him that the Phillies had lost both games of their doubleheader. He felt sorry for Brother Turnbull, who would soon be banished from The Word of Life. Brother Fletcher did not like that. He did not like the Reverend Mr. Sloan either. That wasn’t really a problem—the problem lay in keeping his mouth shut about it. Brother Turnbull was not a homosexual, and Brother Fletcher knew that. He wondered why he had not called Mr. Sloan a liar and marched out of The Word of Life himself. He didn’t know why he hadn’t done that, but he knew that he hadn’t, and he felt slightly dirty. And yet the church was before him, empty, quiet, peaceful, and Brother Fletcher, looking at it, felt equally quiet, equally peaceful.

Brother Fletcher closed the hymnbooks on the rostrum, picked up a program that had fallen to the floor. He stepped off the platform and walked slowly down the aisle, looking at the littered floor, the chewing gum stuck to the underside of seats that had flipped up when the occupants had departed. He leaned over to pick up a tiny pink glove that some little girl had forgotten.

At the rear of the church Brother Fletcher paused and turned around, gazing back along the aisle, across the backs of the vacant seats to the vacant pulpit. In the dimly lit recess behind the pulpit a large bronze cross gleamed dully. Brother Fletcher reached out his hand and extinguished the lights. The sanctuary sank into darkness except for one stream of light that shone down from the balcony onto the cross. In his mind Brother Fletcher heard again the shouts of Amen, amen, and Preach on, boy, preach on, that had been superimposed on his sermon. He thought of Sister Lavernia Thompson’s ugly face seeming almost beautiful as he had laid his hands on her shoulders and prayed for her health. Slowly he raised his arms, stretching them out toward the front of the sanctuary. “May …” he said softly. He stopped, began again. “May the Lord bless you and keep you,” he intoned, and his deep voice rolled across the empty seats and echoed back from the walls. “May the Lord lift the light of his countenance upon you, and give you peace. Amen.”

Brother Fletcher held his arms up for a moment longer, then let them drop to his sides. He turned quickly and pushed through the swinging doors into the lobby. The custodian, whose job it was to lock up, was standing in the front doorway, kicking at something. “G’wan, get ’way fum here.”

“What is it?” said Brother Fletcher.

“Oh, Bro’ Fletcher,” said the custodian, “it’s just some shifless wino on da steps.”

“Let him stay,” said Brother Fletcher.

“All right,” said the custodian doubtfully, “but Reverend Sloan tole me—”

“Reverend Sloan is not here,” Brother Fletcher said. “Let the man stay. Where is he?” Brother Fletcher moved over to the door and looked down at the old man huddled in the corner of the vestibule. “Are you cold?” said Brother Fletcher. The old man just looked at him, his eyes glassy. The night was warm, but the old man had his arms wrapped around himself. He was shivering. “Let him inside,” said Brother Fletcher.

“What?” said the custodian.

“Inside. They can let him out when they come in the morning to clean.”

“But Mr. Sloan …”

Brother Fletcher glared at the custodian, his jaw set. “I said let him in. Now do it.”

“Yassuh,” said the custodian. The old man looked up uncomprehendingly.

“Come on in,” said Brother Fletcher.

The old man’s face assumed a look of grateful disbelief. Brother Fletcher leaned over and helped him up. He staggered on into the church.

“Mr. Sloan sure would be upset,” said the custodian.

Brother Fletcher watched the old man shuffle on into the sanctuary. He went to the door and looked in while the wino settled himself on one of the rear seats, drooping his head on his chest like a chicken going to roost.

“Reverend Sloan—” began the custodian.

“Damn Reverend Sloan,” snapped Brother Fletcher.

“I
WANTS TO KNOW
who he is,” said Vanessa, slipping her long red-painted fingernail into the corner of her lipsticked mouth. “Yes, indeed, I wants to see him. He must be some kinda man.”

“I spose so,” said Charlene, sipping her Budweiser. The glass, leaving her lips, showed tiny smudges on its rim, and a few flecks of dark make-up floated on the beer’s white foam. “All I knows is what I heard.”

“Tell me again,” said Vanessa. She reached out one graceful arm to the chair beside her and found her purse. With a languid motion of thumb and forefinger she opened the clasp and extracted a cigarette. With her other hand she snapped a small silver lighter; flame appeared as if from her fingertips. She lit the cigarette with a quick pass of her lighter and a well-timed inhalation and exhaled a double column of gray smoke.

“Ain’t much to tell,” said Charlene. “Leroy stops the car an’ goes walkin’ into Ed’s to get us some beer, an’ he comes out a while later swearin’ up an’ down that he’s gone get that muthafucka someday, an’ me an’ Les knowed bettern to be astin’ him what was goin’ down. Anyways, Leroy says he wants to fuck, an’ Les says she wants to go up to her place, so they could do it in Rayburn’s bed.” Charlene stopped and looked at Vanessa. “You know that sister a yours is kinda
weird
sometimes, you know what I mean? Anyways, I went on back down to Ed’s to see if I could maybe find out what was happenin’ an’ on the way I run into that simple nigger Elmo, you know the one’s always hangin’ around here tryin’ to turn some little piece a bullshit into a glass a wine? He was goin’ on about how
he’s
gonna cut the nigger someday, an’ it looks to me that somebody sure has managed to get a whole shitload a folks pissed off. Anyway, I ast Elmo who he was gonna cut, an’ he says Rayburn, so I got to thinkin’ maybe Rayburn done got drunk an’ said somethin’ to Leroy, you know?”

“Wait a minute,” Vanessa said, “I thought you said—”

“I’ma get to it,” Charlene said, “you gotta give me some space. Anyways, that Elmo, he’s always chimin’ he knows all the shit, so I ast him.”

“Elmo don’t know nothin’,” Vanessa snapped.

“I found that out,” Charlene said. Vanessa glared at her. Charlene sighed and adjusted the straps on her overworked bra. “Anyways, I went on down an’ hung around outside a Ed’s—you know I don’t be goin’ in there no more, ever since Leo made some crack about me goin’ into labor—an’ pretty soon Betsy comes out, so I ast her. She says Leroy come in an’ wants some beer an’ was walkin’ out ’thout payin’ for it like he owned the place; you know how Leroy is. Anyways, the dude stops him an’ tells him to pay for it. Leroy, he says, ‘Yeah, an’ who’s gonna make me pay? YOU?’” Charlene turned her head quickly to the side, presenting her left profile. “So this dude says, ‘I got friends.’” She twisted her head around the other way and put a tough expression on her face. “‘Yeah?’ says Leroy, ‘well I’d just as soon piss on your friends as look at ’em. An’ I’ma kick your ass.’ So the dude smiles at him”—Charlene smiled—“an’ says, ‘Okay, baby, but Gino ain’t gonna like that.’ Well, boys, when Leroy hears
that
he just turns around an’ hightails it outa here, only before he makes it to the door the dude tells him to pay for the beer. An’ Leroy done it. An’ the dude tells him to leave a tip. An’ Leroy done that, too. An’ that,” Charlene pronounced, “was that.”

“Whooee!” said Vanessa softly. “I gotta find out who this cat is. He must be somethin’! What else did Betsy say? Whad he look like?”

Charlene shrugged. “Betsy said he wasn’t much to look at. Said he was skinny.”

“Comin’ from Betsy that could mean he’s the size of an elephant.”

Charlene snorted. “You break me right up sometimes. I’ll tell you one thing, the dude had to be crazy, movin’ on Leroy like that.”

“He’s gotta be somethin’,” Vanessa said.

“He shows up around here he’s gonna be ruined,” predicted Charlene.

“Don’t sound that way to me. Sounds to me like Leroy might be the one haulin’ ass outa Dodge.”

“I ain’t gonna be haulin’ nothin’ outa noplace, ’cept maybe some blood outa your black hide,” said Leroy, coming up behind Vanessa. He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed, digging his thumb into the tender hollow between her collarbone and shoulder socket. “Where’s ma woman?” he asked Charlene, ignoring Vanessa’s efforts to squirm away.

“Ain’t here yet,” said Charlene.