The Marrowbone Marble Company (29 page)

O
N THE STOOP OF
a secondhand plumbing store, the proprietor and his sons stood and watched people file into Douglass High School. Above the gymnasium door was a sign that read
Grand Opening
:
Carter G. Woodson Community Center.
One of the man's sons asked him, “Why there so many white folks?”

The man shrugged. He had a can of black paint in his hand. “Steady the ladder,” he told his sons. When he got to the top, he dipped his brush and touched up one of the twenty hand-painted signs covering the old house.
We Cut and Thread Pipes While Your Waiting
it read. Below him, the boys paid little attention to the creaking ladder. There was too much happening across the street. A blue school bus had just pulled up.

It was bitter cold for that time of year.

Inside, J. Carl Mitchum stood on the stage and thanked the Neighborhood Youth Corps for their help in getting the center ready. “These young men and women have found that the value of work goes beyond monetary compensation,” he said. He thanked the county's poverty commission for their help, though many in attendance knew such help was reluctant and slow. There was not a single politician present. “And,”

J. Carl said, “I'd like to thank the Marrowbone Marble Company for their significant contributions, of both the financial and sweat varieties.”

He pointed out the Ringer circle and the Ping-Pong table in the corner, and when he finished speaking, people milled around the gym, eating ham biscuits and cupcakes and signing their names to paper lists meant to mobilize. The center would offer typing classes and legal advice.

There was an old, duct-taped heavy bag hung in the corner. Little boys beat on it with their fists, then blew on scraped knuckles. A man held his baby girl up to the speed bag and pushed her fat hands against it. She laughed at the way it swung to and fro. Orb and Chester inspected the Ringer circle and eyeballed the crowd for any marble players.

After the cicadas had all died off, Orb found himself rusty inside the circle. He hadn't yet discovered his old delivery, and he was afraid to use his new cicada taw. He didn't want it to shatter.

Chester pointed to the bleachers stacked against the wall and said, “I bet you I could backflip off that. Bet you them little boys would pay to see it.”

Willy and Stretch stepped outside for a smoke. They watched the man across the street repaint his signs. Willy pointed to one.
We Buy Sell or Swap Anything
. “You really think he means anything?” he asked. “Think you can swap knives and guns?”

“He ain't got no guns,” Stretch said. He pointed to the corner. “You seen my house since Mom died?”

Willy shook his head no. They walked down Tenth Avenue to the corner of Sixteenth Street. They had their coat collars up to keep out the cold.

Stretch pointed east to a brown brick two-story. “Bank owns it now,” he said. He'd moved out to Marrowbone full time.

“Looks empty,” Willy said. The windows were shuttered with plywood.

Stretch crossed the street and Willy followed. Cars howled by and paid them no mind.

They circled the house. Stretch knocked on the plywood as if someone might still be inside. A length of downspout hung loose at the back corner and he kicked it free.

In the alley, four boys pitched nickels on the apron of a rotten garage. Stretch knew one of them. “What's goin on, Larry?” he said.

They all looked sideways at Willy and went back to the game.

A middle-aged man in a torn toboggan walked over from the housing projects. His limp reminded Willy of his daddy's. The man walked in front of a slow-moving car as if he hadn't seen it. “Loose squares,” he was calling as he came. “Who need loose squares?”

The nickel pitchers ignored him. “I'll take one,” Willy said.

Stretch gave him a look. “A quarter,” the man said. “A quarter?” Willy knew better. “I'll give you a dime.”

“Fifteen cent.”

Willy handed over the change. The man pulled a small brown Ball jar from his coat pocket and fished out a cigarette.

He hollered at passing cars as he left, “Loose squares, who need em?” One of the nickel pitchers stood and told Willy, “You better off throwing that fifteen cent on the ground right here so I can take it.” His fingertips were gray from playing. “Don't you know that man soaks his cigarettes in cat pee?” he said.

Willy sniffed the cigarette and all the boys laughed.

Stretch was the first to stop. He said, “You all know about the community center across the street?”

“What about it?”

“It's open,” Stretch said. “Basketball, boxing, help with your school-work. Marbles.” The word sounded juvenile on the air. He wished he hadn't said it. “You shoot marbles like you pitch them nickels, you'll be doin all right.”

“Marbles?” one of the boys said. He hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his blue jeans. “We don't play no marbles.”

“You can lay bets on Ringer just like you can lay bets on anything,” Willy said.

The tallest boy frowned. “What you know about layin bets pecker-wood?” he said.

“Plenty,” Willy answered.

Stretch told them to have a good one and he and Willy walked back across Sixteenth Street. “Better watch your mouth around here,” Stretch said. “How the hell you even know what loose squares was?”

“I know a lot of things,” Willy said. He'd learned some of them from Fury, who'd sent him six letters from Vietnam, each one more erratic than before.

Up ahead, the plumbing-store proprietor was showing Ledford a set of four tires. “Lightly used,” he was saying. “Uniroyals, good rubber.” He stuck a penny in the tread and half of Lincoln's head disappeared. “See?” he said.

Ledford turned to Mack. “Got room for em in the bus?”

Mack said he did. “I'll take em,” Ledford said. They shook hands and Ledford looked around the yard at the other wares for sale. Bathtubs and sinks were everywhere. There were toilets and smokestacks lining the house's foundation. Pipes blackened by weather leaned against the siding and reached almost to the roof. Ledford spotted a hand-crank wringer-washer like the one from his boyhood home. He walked over and turned it, watched the teeth line up and roll. For a moment, he considered sticking his hand inside to see what would happen.

Orb had gotten inside an old clawfoot tub on the side lawn. He looked as though he might fall asleep there. Chester was climbing a four-holed industrial sink leaning vertical against the house. When he got to the top, he back-flipped to the ground below as the two boys who'd steadied their father's ladder looked on, wide-eyed.

A police cruiser rolled past. The officers inside surveyed people as they filed from Woodson Community Center. They drove at a crawl and watched Mack and Ledford roll tires toward their blue Short Bus. They watched Orb sling his leg over the side of the tub. The officer in the passenger seat told his partner, “See there, circus does come to nigger town.”

They laughed. In the backseat, Shorty Maynard was in street clothes. He liked to go for ride-alongs with Huntington officers. He called it “jungle safari.”

They rolled past Stretch Hayes as he lit another cigarette. Shorty made a gun out of his hand and pointed it at Stretch. “Circus is about to be shut down,” he said.

At sundown, the Short Bus was running hard. Mack put it to the floor coming up Knob Drop Road. “Listen to that,” he said.

It sounded to Ledford like the engine might explode. He leaned over and eyeballed the needle. The drop-off was coming and Mack was still at fifty miles an hour. “Drop-off's comin,” Ledford said.

“Damn right it is.” Mack didn't appreciate a backseat driver, but he knew that when a man's family dies in an automobile crash, he's liable to be careful at the wheel. “I'll slow er down,” Mack said. He let off the gas.

The seats of the bus were filled. Rachel pulled her coat under her legs. The Naugahyde was hard and cold. Lizzie shuffled cards. She and Rachel were playing high-low.

In the back, Willy watched the trees whip by. Orb and Chester watched Willy and tried to act like he did. “Don't slow down so much,” Willy said.

“You think this is a airplane?” Mack shot them a look in the wide rearview. He had his eyebrows raised.

Chester said, “What are you talking about?”

“The drop-off,” Willy told him. “Dead man's curve.” He whispered to Chester and Orb, “I can take it at thirty miles an hour.”

The tires banked a rut. Everyone shook in their seats. Ledford wondered what Willy whispered. He knew the boy drove the Packard too fast.

Mack slowed to fifteen by the time they got inside the hard right. The boys all craned at the window to see the drop-off. The new guardrail had already started to rust. There was a long black streak where some drunk fool had tested its strength.

Coming through the straight stretch, Mack counted two cars in the front yard of the Ray place, and the Rays didn't own but one. It sat where it always did, dead as ever. Trunk-popped and hawking goods. But the other one was a white Impala. “You see that Impala?” Mack said.

Ledford had his eyes on. “I see it.”

Mack pulled into the drive and shut off the bus.

W. D. Ray was standing by his wares, talking to Noah and Charlie Ball. All three squinted to see who had pulled in.

“Stay on the bus everybody,” Ledford said. He stepped from the open door. Mack did the same.

The drive was laid with fresh gravel. Ledford leaned into Mack as they walked. “Who you think put in this rock?” he asked. Then he straightened up and waved a hand. “Afternoon, Charlie, Noah. Mr. Ray.” He nodded to each. They got in handshaking distance and Ledford stuck his in his pockets. “I would say it was fancy seein you out here Charlie,” he said, eyes wide and leveled, “but I reckon you can buy votes in any district.”

Charlie shot Noah a look. Word was out. Noah was making a run at the legislature. Charlie cleared his throat and said, “Somebody's got to make things right out here.”

Ledford laughed. He produced his tobacco and stuck a plug in.

Mr. Ray walked slow back to his porch.

Charlie breathed deep. “Your laugh meant to suggest something, Ledford?” He was talking like he did to people who worked for him. He was puffing up. “You think you're the man to make things right?”

“I think I'm thrice the man you are, for that or anything else,” Ledford said. “I ought to run against Noah, whup him in the primary.”

The words had come quicker than Charlie expected. He searched for something to say.

Ledford tongued his plug. “He won't step inside my polling booth, that's for certain.” Noah wouldn't meet Ledford's stare, so he turned it back to Charlie. “You want me to spit on your shoes again Charlie?” he asked. “If Shorty Maynard was here, he could draw his hanky and wipe it off, I'd imagine. Shine em while he's at it.”

There was silence, and the feeling that somebody might pull a gun. Mack felt his blood surge. He'd not been this close to a fight in some time.

Charlie stepped forward like he was going to do something. Ledford squared him up. “You going to draw your sidearm like Shorty does?”

“He never did draw it,” Charlie said, spittle at the corners of his mouth.

“Had his hand on it though, didn't he?” Ledford winked at him. Charlie's teeth were grit.

On the bus, Rachel shut her eyes. She prayed for silence. She prayed there'd be no gun clap. Beside her, Lizzie did the same.

Ledford turned to the open trunk of the rusted Chevy. Inside, black-stamped cardboard boxes had been split open at the seams. “Chewing gum and coffee,” he said. “Straight out of the box. Which one you buyin, Charlie?”

Charlie looked at Mack for the first time. He started to ask him what he was staring at, but thought better of it. “I don't drink coffee and I don't chew bubble gum,” Charlie said.

“Then why you standin here for?” Mack said. “I don't see no box in that trunk labeled
Ballots
.”

Charlie's lip quivered. He sniffed hard.

Mack told him, “Say it. Say what you want to say to me.”

But Charlie Ball didn't say a word. He looked at Noah, then over at Mr. Ray, and then he walked to his car.

Ledford smiled at Mack. “Well, I guess we'd better move so these gentlemen can clear on out.” He waved at Mr. Ray. “Mr. Ray, I believe we'll be talkin soon.”

Charlie was furious. It was time to talk to Shorty Maynard again, time to give the go-ahead.

Back on the bus, Mack swung the wheel as he reversed them onto the road. “Good people of Marrowbone,” he said to them all, “what kind of man doesn't drink coffee or chew gum?”

“A stupid one,” Chester hollered.

They all laughed. “That's right,” Mack said. He'd backed up on Knob Drop to let the other two out. He wanted to see them drive away.

“A stupid son-of-a-bitching one,” Orb said.

They all laughed again, Willy the hardest.

Orb was straight-faced. Deadly serious, watching the Impala disappear down the hill.

“That's right Orb,” Ledford said. “A stupid son-of-a-bitching one.” He'd never heard the boy speak such words. Orb was the one with an even temper. He turned to Mack at the wheel. “Pull back in,” he told him.

Ledford walked alone to the Rays' front door. He carried a pressure cooker full of Lizzie's half-runners. They'd forgotten to set them out at Douglass. When W.D. opened the heavy door, Ledford said, “Forgot to give you these beans.”

Inside, it smelled of rotten wood and cornbread. Ledford sat down in a schoolroom chair. The desktop had been removed, but the metal arm stuck up sharp. He situated himself across from W.D. and said, “Who laid your gravel?”

“I did.” W.D. snorted and looked behind him at the kitchen. “Fix Loyal some coffee,” he said, but no one was there.