The Devil's Only Friend (15 page)

“Hello,” I said.

She said nothing and registered no dismay at my appearance, but closed the door to remove the chain. She opened it up again so I could enter.

“Mr. Caudill,” she said, “you look the worse for wear.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I'll take your hat.”

“No, I won't stay long.” I pulled off my hat to be polite and couldn't keep from turning partly away from her in shame for my appearance.

“May I offer you anything?”

“I don't want to be a—”

“We've supper left over if you'd like a bite to eat.”

“I could have a glass of water.”

Walker was there in the tiny front room, slouched in a chair next to the radio, looking tired.

“I'm about to step out to work,” he said.

“I can give you a lift.”

“No, it's just down to Sunnie Wilson's place, in the skating rink. He don't need the help, but I go down most nights to throw bottles around.”

Emily brought the water and then went back to the kitchen to finish cleaning the supper dishes. I took a hard gulp that seemed to make a clog in my throat, and then another.

“That beating you took wasn't for my sake, was it?”

“I don't think so,” I said. “I don't know.”

He stood up and grabbed a jacket and a cap from the stand by the door. “Let's walk down together,” he said.

I put down the glass on the radio table and followed him down to the street.

“My children don't read the newspapers,” he said. “But they did see the picture of their auntie this morning. I guess one of the schoolboys thought it was a good joke.”

“I'm sorry about that,” I said.

“This man Chew came by the other day.”

“What did he say?”

“My Emily won't take any guff.”

“I can see to Chew,” I said. “I'll need to have a hard word with him.”

“I don't worry about him,” Walker said. “I worry about falling into the same trouble that seems to dog you. I've got children here.”

“I think the boys who roughed me over were working for Estelle Hardiman. And you didn't really have anything to do with that whole mess.”

“You and I have had some association. And now a white man brings a bundle of money to my home, says it's from you—”

“Jesus, Walker, I'm trying to help you!”

“Why do you feel like you need to help me?”

That stumped me.

“Do you blame yourself for everything that happens?”

“For some things,” I mumbled.

“Am I the one Negro you've decided to adopt to ease your conscience? I'm a grown man, Mr. Caudill. I can provide for my family.”

We stopped at the corner of Hastings and Canfield. I pushed my lid back on my head and scratched around my hairline.

“Call me Pete,” I said.

Somehow it brought up a smile in him.

“All right, Pete,” he said. “My name is Jonah. Did you ever know that?”

“I might have known it. But I forget things.”

“Now this money—”

“Forget it,” I said. “I jewed it from Jasper Lloyd.”

“I can't take that money,” Walker said. “You know I can't.”

“Lloyd's money isn't dirty. That old carcass has done a lot for this city. He's hired plenty of colored folks—making a good living for themselves.”

“Don't lecture me about the welfare of my people.”

“Just spend the money—and spend it quick. You can't hold on to things.”

“It's your money,” Walker said. “I don't work for Mr. Lloyd.”

It put me back a step. “I've got my own money. Listen, I went to Lloyd to see if I could get anything from him about your sister. Seems he's got an interest, too. So he asked me to look into it, that's all.”

We were standing in the middle of the block, facing each other squarely. Tulips and daffodils had lately pushed up in rows along the front porches, and plump robins hopped in the shadows along the grass, watching us.

“Look, Walker,” I said, toning my voice to a low growl. “Why don't you shove all this and help me out? You say you're a grown man; why are you doing a boy's job for Sunnie?”

“I've got to feed my family.”

“You're talking to the one person”—I stood close and dropped to a hoarse whisper—“I know you've got some dough now. You could feed those little ones for some time with that kind of cash.”

“I told you—”

“You don't want to help me figure out who cut the legs and arms off your baby sister?”

The sun had gone, but Walker's eyes glowed with light picked up from Sunnie's place and from the streetlamps along Hastings.

“I got my mind on owning a place like this someday,” he said, taking in Sunnie's big Forest Club. “For my children, for my wife, a little piece of something, a place of our own.”

“I don't think Sunnie is going to let the place go.”

His face seemed haggard and gray, and his shoulders drooped. He was still built pretty well, but I could see how he was settling into an older man's body, brought down by gravity and stiffening joints.

“I ain't gonna get you killed any faster than you're killing yourself,” I said.

Maybe he was too worn out to argue. “All right,” he said. “How do you think I can help you?”

I grinned to show him the teeth. “I don't know! Can you put on some nice clothes? I'll swing over and pick you up in the morning.”

“I've got a shift at four tonight with Charles the baker. I can't leave him dry.”

“Well?”

“Those deliveries have to be done by nine o'clock.”

“I'll be back here at ten, then,” I said.

“I'll be ready. Just lay a tap on the horn and I'll come down.”

He turned away and angled across the street to the back entrance of the Forest Club. Already they were bowling inside. I could hear the cracking and rumbling of the pins like a faraway thunderstorm. It was a good long way from Sunnie Wilson's club to the alley that ran behind the row of shops where I'd killed the young colored boy—so many years ago. Dead now, long time. He'd been pilfering a shoe store with his buddy. It dogged me still. The echo of that bad shot came back to me as I stood alone, a white man in the middle of the colored district. Not so much of a man anymore, either, after all.

As Walker slipped into Sunnie's place, I thought I heard him mumble, “Don't get me killed.”

CHAPTER 15

Sometime after midnight I was lying in my bed. The soup and sandwich I had eaten for supper sat gurgling on my stomach, keeping me from sleep. The old pipes in the building clanged whenever the boiler let out a belch and bubbly water gurgled through the cast-iron drainpipes in the walls. Now and again the wind would brush hard enough over the treetops to make a sound like a waterfall. There were mice in the walls, too, but they didn't plague me much because they knew I didn't keep anything to make them fat. They scratched along their trails through the building's skeleton, freed by darkness. In a pitch that was barely audible, the damage done to my skull tuned in and out like a station on the shortwave, and I was tempted to try to make out a message in the chatter.

Out of that chorus I began to hear a tip-tapping that came in the rhythm of someone sneaking down a flight of stairs. This was followed directly by the click and rattle of a doorway being carefully opened and closed, and more steps, now creaking softly down the carpeted hall toward my door. Still, the low knock startled me when it came.

The gun was close to the bed. I picked it up and rolled out and threw a robe over my shoulders. There was no bullet in the chamber, and I tried to decide quickly whether I should rack the action back to set the first slug. But then another low knock came at the door, and I decided against it. I went over and listened for a moment. There was no peephole in the door, but I had fastened the chain, and so I was able to open the door a crack. I expected to see Lloyd's secretary with my penicillin, but there in a white gown with her hair tied up stood Federle's wife.

Because I had taken off my eye patch for the night, I had to keep the hole shut tight to keep it from gaping. I knew it made me look like I was winking furiously.

“Can I come in?”

“Why?”

“I have to talk to you about Ray.”

“Go on and talk.”

“But I can't stand here in the hall.”

“Sure you can. You are.”

“Please,” she said.

I was afraid she'd make a ruckus if I closed her out. Or maybe my judgment was reliably bad. I let her in, stepped to the nightstand, and wrapped my patch quickly over my eye. I put the gun down and got all the way into the robe.

“Well?”

“I'm sorry I smacked you,” she said.

“I been hurt worse.”

“I can see,” she said. She wore a regular nightie that reached to her ankles and leather slippers on her tiny feet. Her hair was thick and almost black. She had brushed it out for the night and gathered it up in a pile that wanted to spill out from the back of her head.

“Well?”

She stood with her fingertips just touching together before her and kept her wide eyes on me. Her face had been wiped clean of any makeup, and I could see that she hadn't a line on her pale skin. Her lips looked soft.

“I'm worried about Ray,” she said.

“Your man is out to work scrubbing toilets, and you're down here in your nightie.”

“You don't think that I—my two girls—”

“He ought to be worried about
you.
”

She was looking at me too much with her awful eyes. I fixed my robe and tightened up the belt.

“Can't I sit down and tell you?”

“No,” I said. “Make it short and get out.”

“They've really worked you over.”

“That's all done with.”

“Did you like the bread I made?”

“I ate it.”

“Don't you want to talk about Ray?”

“What about him?”

“I don't think he's really going out to work at night. Sometimes he comes home and his clothes aren't even dirty.”

“So what? My clothes don't get dirty if I can help it.”

“He's a janitor! He doesn't sleep. I'm afraid he's just out roaming the streets at night. He can't stand to be cooped up.” She was stepping forward in such a way that I didn't notice her feet moving.

“Well, how's his shoe leather?” I had my hands in the pockets of my robe and a scowl screwed down onto my face. “If he was out walking all night, sooner or later he'd get picked up.”

“I don't know what he's doing.”

“You think he's with some woman?”

“Oh, no,” she said. She looked like her eyes might get wet. “I don't know what to think. When he wanted so much to move out here, I thought it would be different.”

She was right next to me, so close that I could smell her hair and the light perfume of her skin. I didn't move when her hand snaked inside my robe, didn't even take my hands from my pockets. She found her way into my shorts and wrapped her slim fingers around my prick.

“That's nothing to play with,” I said.

She tipped her head forward under my chin and brought her free hand over my heart.

“So sad it all seems,” she breathed on my chest. “So sad.”

She stroked gently until my prick was good and stiff and poking out the front of my robe. Her breathing was deep and hot on my chest. I knew it wasn't right but I let her go on. It was a hell of a thing to get so stirred up so easily. At the back of my mind flashed a thought about the baby crying, the older girl lying awake and wondering where her mother and father had gone.

I made fists in my pockets. I knew that soon Federle's wife would coax the juice out of me if I let her go on. She brought her other hand down and cradled my balls with surprising warmth and gentleness. The stroking came in a deep rhythm, and I could feel her hips moving too, her thigh turned out and rubbing along my leg.

“My name's Patty,” she panted. Her forehead pressed hard into my chest.

It brought up a flash of anger in me that was brushed aside by fatigue and the dreamy thrill of it. I wanted to put my fingers around her neck, to feel her pulse under my thumb. Despite the two children, she was young enough and small enough and pretty enough to dredge up the powerful memory of the backseat struggles of my teenaged years. It was sharply painful to think of how far I'd come, how much of a heel and a black spot I'd become. All the sore muscles, the torn skin, and the damaged joints of my body had blurred together into a generalized pain—but as I felt how close my balls were to riding up and letting go, I felt a growing pain deep in my bowels, too.
I should have stayed at the hospital,
I thought.
A pipe got knocked loose on the inside.

Finally I pulled my hands from my pockets and took hold of her shoulders.

“I hadn't ought to do it,” I said.

“But he's no good to me!” She didn't turn her face up to look at me. She grabbed my prick with both hands, squeezed hard, and slowed the stroking. She said again, “He's no good to me.”

“Neither am I. I know that much.”

“I'm sorry, Pete,” she said, loosening her hands and rolling slowly away.

At once I regretted it.
What's the difference?
I thought.
Why shouldn't we?
My prick felt the chill in an instant but stayed stubbornly alert. I looked sharply at Patty's fine ear and the curve of her jaw, the nape of her neck. Her light gown flounced up as she hurried to the door, and I had a glimpse of her slender ankle.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “Please don't tell Ray.” She did not turn to look at me as the door closed behind her.

Again it seemed I was made of trouble. There was a tickle in my throat that made me want to cough and the pain at the lower end of my spine throbbed horribly. My stitches, which had been healing well, now seemed to itch and burn. Heat rose up over my chest and from my scalp, making me think of infection. The only light in the place came from a bulb kept low with a rheostat. I made sure the door was latched and chained securely and then hobbled over to the toilet to finish the job Federle's wife had started.