The Marrowbone Marble Company (11 page)

E
RM
B
ACIGALUPO HAD BOUGHT
his family a Hallicrafters television set with swinging mahogany doors and a picture tube he dusted with his handkerchief. On the last, hot Chicago night of the Ledford family's visit, he dusted it five times inside an hour. Everyone watched the screen. Even Rachel had her eyes on the television.

The favor of godparenting had been returned, as that morning, Ledford had stood at the altar inside St. Mary of Perpetual Help, renouncing Satan and all his works and pomps. He was now a caretaker of the soul of baby Fiore, Erm's son.

Erm's new place was a two-story red-brick rowhouse in Chicago's Bridgeport neighborhood. There was crystal on every flat surface in the place. Brandy decanters in every room, half full and circled by balloon glasses. Ledford noted the fine glasswork, but he didn't pick them up. The contents of such craftsmanship were hell on a man sticking only to beer.

Erm's wife Agnes had been a nightclub singer—a canary, Erm called her. She didn't say much, and she slept when she pleased. As she had for much of the Ledfords' visit, she lay alone in her upstairs bedroom. The rest of them crowded around the television down below. Little Fiore cried in his Moses basket astride the bar. Erm didn't notice. The wall-mounted phone in the kitchen rang, and he went to it.

Rachel picked up the baby, her own boy crawling free on the floor. She swayed and bounced on the balls of her feet and sang, “Mama's little baby loves shortenin shortenin.” She longed for the drive home the next morning.

Willy reached up and grabbed at the fireplace set. Soon he was standing, steadying himself with two fistfuls of cast iron. Poker in the right, broom in the left. “Loyal,” Rachel said.

Ledford had Mary on his shoulders and was doing a little dance to keep her happy. He eyed Willy, bent his knees, and snatched him up around the waist. Ledford made the sound of a plane throttling, one-handing each of his children, whose laughter came up from the belly and shook their little bodies. Ledford kept his eyes fixed on the television as he spun. It amazed him that such a thing was possible. A moving picture, as it occurred, so that a body in Chicago might see what those inside the picture tube were seeing, at the same instant, in real flesh and blood in Philadelphia. He watched the delegates fanning themselves, the gray screen blurring their features so that each fat man in attendance looked identical to the next. Folks sat talking and laughing, wearing horn-rimmed glasses and mopping sweat. This was the Democratic National Convention, and a speaker was approaching the podium.

Rachel had gotten baby Fiore to sleep, and she placed him back in the Moses basket on the bartop. He'd felt good in her arms, and she wondered when she'd have another one that size. She eavesdropped on Erm in the kitchen. He was talking loud with a cigarette in his lips, something about a wheel.

Ledford set Willy on the floor and pulled a satchel of marbles from his back pocket, one of the dozens of bags he'd bought in recent months. He emptied them on the rug by the boy's fat feet.

“You watch him close,” Rachel said. “He's liable to choke.”

“Hasn't put one in his mouth yet, has he?” Ledford swung Mary down and faced her to her brother. Both children began grabbing at the little glass globes, Mary with precsion, Willy with bad aim. Ledford glanced at them every so often, but he was enraptured with the man on the television. Hands clutching the podium, this mayor from Minnesota commanded attention. He said he was speaking on behalf of a minority report on civil rights. There was a howl from the audience. Some of it good, some of it bad. Ledford leaned in and spun the volume knob. The man's voice raised and he said “vicious discrimination” and he spoke of Jefferson and the freedom of all colors of men and the Democratic Party's dedication to such. He said that there would be no watering down when it came to civil rights. He began to shout and shoot his fist toward the ceiling. “The new Emancipation Proclamation,” he boomed.

Ledford forgot where and when he was as he stared at this little man on the box before him.

“To those who say we are rushing this program, I say we are one hundred and seventy-two years late,” the man said. Ledford felt a rising surge behind his ribs, and it was as if he was back at Rachel's apartment in 1941, in front of the Philco.

There came a chuckle from behind. Ledford turned to find Erm, stabbing a cigarette into an ashtray he held level. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he asked.

Ledford tried to tune him out and put his eyes back on the man with the strange pronunciation who had stirred his very soul. The speech was wrapping up. Erm shouldered past him and rolled down the volume. “Got to be a ball game on,” he said.

On the floor, Willy kicked his sister hard in the thigh and she cried. Ledford picked her up and rubbed her back. He took her to Rachel. Willy stared at the marbles before him as if they might move unassisted, then kicked at them wildly with his feet.

“C'mon to the basement with me Ledford,” Erm said.

In the basement, they smoked and Erm poured a whiskey and a beer. He pulled a brochure from his desk and handed it to Ledford.
Charles Town Race Track
it read. “I like this little West Virginia track,” Erm said.

“I'm going to get in on the ground floor, stable a couple horses there, maybe own my own track someday.” He regarded Ledford through the smoke. “There's money to be made for you and that business you're starting up.”

Ledford wished he hadn't told him about the marble company. “Listen, I saw your face upstairs,” Erm said. “Your college-boy face.” He bugged his eyes and hung open his jaw. “Them politicians get your motor runnin, like your buddy the professor.” Erm shook his head. “You got slow down on that dinge horseshit, Ledford.”

“Dinge?”

“Niggers,” Erm said. The lamp on his desk flickered and hummed. It was dark down there, the paneling a deep amber, the ceiling low. “Don't get me wrong, I work with em. Just got off the phone with one who runs a wheel in Bronzeville. Dresses first class, got a billfold full a spinach.” He stopped to light another cigarette, the flame dancing purple under his hollowed eyes. “But he lives in the black belt, he runs his numbers in the black belt, and he keeps to the dinge canaries chirping in the Black Belt clubs. You know why?” It was quiet. They breathed hot mildew, stagnant basement air. Erm switched on the table fan. “Because the second he steps out of Bronzeville lookin for a house to buy, he's a dead man. The first customer he calls on outside of Bronzeville, he's a dead man. The first white broad walkin down Halstead he does a double take on, maybe stares a little too long? He's a dead man.”

Ledford listened to the hum of the fan. He watched its silver propeller turn inside the cage.

Erm leaned into his highback leather chair. He put his feet on the desk. “Your man on television can say what he wants.” He spread his arms wide and faced his open palms in. “But white is over here, and black is over here.” He looked from one hand to the other, spoke slow and deliberate. “And that is how it will always be.”

Ledford leaned into his own chair. He fingered the brass nail heads that gathered leather taut across the armrest. Across from him, Erm set his cigarette in an ashtray and took out his front teeth. They weren't as white as before. Looked more wood than porcelain. Erm dropped them into a glass of clear liquid on his desk. Ledford watched them clink and settle. He glanced down at his knuckles, the white scar from the punch that had taken Erm's teeth. Ledford rubbed at the coffee-colored leather and contemplated his friend. He'd been right to hit him all those years ago, and he was of a mind to do it again. Instead, he said, “You're wrong, Erm.”

“About what?”

“About black and white and how they will always be.”

Erm smiled. The empty space in front gave him a look of stupidity. Toothless for all his riches, he was a sight. “Whatever you say Ledford.”

Each man was troubled then, and each wore a grin that both showed and concealed such trouble. If they'd been in a Guadalcanal foxhole, they might have drawn short blades or choked one another. But they were here, wives and children walking and talking and breathing upstairs, babies newly cleansed by God, absolved of what would surely come. So Erm and Ledford sat and stared.

Erm was the first to look away. He shuffled a stack of papers, whirled the teeth circular in their bleach. “Listen,” he said. “We think different, me and you. We even drink different these days, now that you gone square on me. But that don't matter. We're friends, Ledford.” The fan shut off and the desk lamp cut out. Blackness enveloped the basement. “Goddamnit,” Erm said.

Upstairs, the fireplace set overturned and cast iron clanged loud. Willy cried out, but it carried the sound of fear, not injury. Mary joined in. Then baby Fiore. Ledford listened to the calm stride of Rachel above him. She walked blind to each of the children, her hands true and strong despite the darkness.

Erm tripped over a case of wine and cursed. He was looking for a candle.

Ledford stayed put, still rubbing at the armrest nail heads. He could hear everything in the dark. Down the alley, someone kicked over a trash can. Two floors up, Agnes called weakly for help. A mouse ran across the ceiling joist above his head, its tiny feet clicking splinters.

Erm struck a match and held it to the candle's wick. He lit up yellow, all shirt front and forehead. “What the hell are you just sitting there for, Ledford?” he said.

Ledford laughed. “You're yellow,” he said. “Too much chow-line atabrine.”

Erm tripped over the same case of wine. He cursed again, raised his foot, and brought it down hard. Thin pinewood split wide open, loud as a firecracker, and bottles popped and shattered. Their contents pooled and ran a wide trickle across the concrete, searching for the grate. Ledford closed his eyes to be rid of the candle's glow. He listened to the wine moving slow across the floor. A perfect sound, like a low creek before sunrise, only slower. Wine slow, he thought, and then he thought of Jesus and Cana, how the Methodists of his father's church had only drunk grape juice, had known Jesus' wine was unfermented. He thought of Reverend Thompson and the Episcopal Church of his wife. The free-flowing, fermented wine they sipped. He thought of the man on the cross in his dream, the blood of the Christ in his Bible, the blood on the pages of his history books, the blood of the African slaves as it spilled from the ships that brought them here and into the cracks of auction blocks and platform parades and the dirt of the cotton field and the drain on the street. He thought of the blood of the sleeping Japanese boy with the thin mustache, how it surged and fell in sheets and spoke to him in the language of animals. He wondered how a man could ever get past such a sight and sound as that.

Erm switched on a right-angle flashlight and shined it in Ledford's face. Then he trained it on the wine trail, which had routed itself between the legs of Ledford's chair and was fast approaching the floor drain. Ledford turned and watched it follow the cracked contours of the foundation. Blood red but thin like water.

“Twenty dollars a bottle,” Erm said.

Rachel hollered for a little help. Ledford stood up and walked to the staircase. He stopped on the way and put his hand on Erm's shoulder.

“You're right Erm. We're friends, always will be,” he said. “But I can't use your money for what I've got to do.” He handed back the racetrack brochure. In the exchange, the flashlight's beam wobbled between them. “We'll be hitting the road tonight,” Ledford said. He ascended the stairs and gathered his wife and children.

 

I
T WAS THE
bottom of the seventh inning in the league championship game against International Nickel. Mann Glass was up 6 to 5. Ledford sat on the dugout bench and cleaned out his cleats with a Popsicle stick. Next to him was Charlie Ball, who whimpered like a child over the hamstring he'd pulled running down a fly to right. He'd made the catch and gotten them to the stretch. But now the top of the lineup was due at the plate. Ledford was batting lead off and Charlie followed. It was clear he wasn't going to make the batter's box, and they were already down to nine men after two machine boys had to leave in the sixth to report for Saturday C shift.

Ledford saw his chance to gain ground in a battle he'd lost at season's beginning. Back then, the other men had voted down his proposal to integrate the team, ignoring his insistence that Mack Wells was a fine shortstop. Now, watching Charlie Ball's ugly grimace, Ledford put in a plug of tobacco and said, “Charlie, your uniform'd fit Mack Wells just fine.” He nodded his head in the direction of Mack, Lizzie, and Harold, who sat on the far end of the left-field guest bleachers, ten feet between them and the other spectators. Mack had brought his brother and mother to watch the game. Harold was reading a book.

“Didn't anybody ever tell you not to crack jokes that isn't funny?” Charlie said. He stopped bellyaching long enough to look at Ledford and spread his one-sided smile.

Ledford spat heavy on the toe of Charlie's left cleat. “I look like I'm joking?” he asked.

Charlie rubbed at his hamstring with both hands. “You're crazy if you think I'm lettin a dirty nigger wear my uniform.”

Ledford scrunched his lips and sucked in his cheeks. He worked up another load of tobacco juice and spat again, this time on the left pantleg.

“Hey!” Charlie Ball turned red.

“What you going to do Charlie?” Ledford asked him. He stuck his finger in the man's soft stomach and said, “You're too fat to get around on the fast ball anyhow, bench blanket.”

Charlie Ball showed his teeth then. He furrowed his brow and cocked back his fist like he might throw it at Ledford, who just smiled in response and said, “Let it fly rich boy.”