Under the Skin (9 page)

He screamed and fell to his knees. I gave him a knee to the chin
that cracked his jaws together and his derby twirled off and he went
tumbling down the stairs, his head banging the steps. He landed in
a heap at the foot of the stairway and didn’t move.

Everybody in the parlor was on his feet. Some were gawking at me,
some were clearing out fast. The bouncer hopped over the derby man
and came up at me with his fists ready, happy for the chance at some
action and in no mood to talk things over. Fine with me. But the fool
should’ve waited for me to come down rather than give me the advantage of the higher stairs.

I raised the briefcase like I was going to throw it at him—and as
his hands rose to defend against it I kicked him in the chest. He sailed
down the stairs and on his ass and his momentum carried him in a
complete somersault over the derby man and he slammed the floor on
his back so hard the vibrations came up through my feet. He lay
spread-eagled with his eyes and mouth open wide, one leg twitching
slightly like it had an electrical short in it.

As I came down the stairs the only two guys still in the room
sped for the front door. The derby man was on his belly and out
cold. Blood was seeping from his nose and open mouth, and his broken finger jutted awkwardly on a knuckle that looked like a purple
walnut.

The bouncer’s eyes were terrified. His mouth was working without sound and he probably thought he was going to die for lack of air.
And then it came to him, a deep hissing inhalation, and he closed his
eyes and gave himself over to the luxury of breath.

I stepped around them and went to the bar. Mrs. Lang was enraged
but I knew she wouldn’t call the police. A fracas like this didn’t happen often and was anyway a hazard of the trade, an inconvenience that
would cut into the evening’s profits but wasn’t as much of a problem
for her as the cops would be.

I grinned at Mrs. Lang as I dug a quarter out of my pocket. “Jesus,
I pay enough for ten turns
and
I entertain the joint, and I don’t even
get a beer on the house?”

Her mouth pinched tighter. Her good humor had fled with her
customers. I flipped the coin to the old guy and he made a neat catch.
“That stupid man was spoiling for a fight,” Mrs. Lang said. “And
that damned Hollis didn’t give you much choice, I know. But I can’t
have fighting here, it’s terrible for business. I’m afraid you’re not welcome here anymore. Neither is he.”
I drained most of the glass in a swallow. One of the girls and her
trick came slowly down the stairs. The man stepped carefully around
the two guys on the floor and hustled on outside. The girl knelt beside the bouncer and helped him to sit up.
I finished the beer and wiped my mouth. “Well,” I said, “all right.
I just hope to hell I can find me another whorehouse somewhere
around here.”
The crack didn’t raise a smile from anybody but the skinny maid.
I exchanged winks with her as I went out the door.

patronized all the cafés to see which ones I liked best. I took my ease
on benches in the city parks and the German beer gardens. I wandered along the railyards, the ship port, the shrimp docks. I bellied
up to the bar in waterfront saloons full of sailors speaking a dozen different languages.

The main Negro quarter was just south of the red-light district,
and in those early weeks I sometimes went there for barbecue and to
listen to the blues and watch the couples dance to jazz. It was dancing to beat any I’d ever seen. One night I was in a place called the
Toot Sweet Jazz Hall and a lean smoky girl with bloodred lipstick
and an ass as round as a medicine ball asked me to dance. When I said
I didn’t know how, not that way, she laughed and pulled me out on
the floor and taught me.

A little while later we were in her apartment and going at it. But
then while we were resting up and having a cigarette the door crashed
open and a guy big as a gorilla came charging in, cursing her for a nogood bitch and holding a straight razor. I rolled to the floor so he’d
have to stoop to try to cut me, but the fool only kicked me in the head
and then went for the screaming girl—which gave me the chance to
drive my foot into the side of his knee, breaking the joint and bringing him down with a pretty good holler of his own. I grabbed his
blade hand and bit it, crunching bone and tasting blood, and he let
the razor drop. I slapped it away under the bed and punched him in
the neck and got to my feet and stomped my heel into his crotch. His
eyes bugged out and he rolled onto his side and threw up.

She was sitting on the bed and pressing a hand to her cheek, blood
running from between her fingers and down her arm and dripping on
the sheets.
“Kill him!”
she said. “Kill that lowdown nigger!”

But since the lowdown nigger in question already had a busted
knee and a chewed hand that would infect worse than a dog bite, not
to mention a pair of swollen balls that would be hurting him for days,
I didn’t see the need. I started getting my clothes on fast.

She said I didn’t have to worry about the cops, they never came to
Niggertown unless a white person called them in. I wasn’t worried
about cops—but if the gorilla had pals close by I didn’t want to fight
them bare-assed too. She pressed a towel to her cheek with one hand
and held her dress with the other and stepped into it and clumsily
tugged it up over her hips.

The guy had quit puking but he wasn’t about to stand up on that
knee, not for a long time. He was holding his balls and glaring at me
in a painful rage. “Kill you, mothafucker. Come back in Niggertown,
man, I
kill
your ass.”

It wasn’t a good time to talk to me that way—the knot he’d raised
over my eye was starting to ache. I fetched him a bootkick to the ear
that shut him up except for the moaning.

As I went out the door she was cursing him and stamping on his
head with her bare foot, still only half-dressed, her pretty tits jiggling
as she let him have it.

I returned to the Toot Sweet Club a few nights later. I didn’t see
the girl or the gorilla anywhere, but hadn’t expected to, considering
their condition. Some of the spades gave me pretty hard looks, and I
supposed the story had got around. One girl finally sidled up to me
and said if I was looking for Corella—I hadn’t even known her name,
it had all been “baby” and “sugar” between us—she’d gone home to
Lake Charles where she had a childhood sweetie who’d probably take
her back, cut face and all. As for Zachary, the fella who cut her, his
leg was in a cast and his hand looked like a boxing glove and all he
could do was stay home drunk. I bought her a drink, but before she
could take the first sip some guy in dark glasses and with a gold front
tooth came over and whispered in her ear. She gave me an “I’m sorry”
look and moved off with the guy, leaving the drink on the bar. I hung
around long enough to let any of them who wanted to try me have
the chance, but nobody made a move.

but it was obvious the word was out. The guys never took their eyes
off me, and for all their looking, the women kept their distance. No
fun in that, so I quit going.

Rough as it was, the Negro quarter wasn’t any rougher than the
streets and alleys between Post Office and the railroad tracks. The
area’s rundown tenements were home to Galveston’s poorest and most
troublesome whites, and the town’s meanest coloreds lived in its alleyway shacks. On a section of Market Street called Little China, a
Chinese family with a dozen or so members lived in the single back
room of a laundry, and another Chinese bunch lived in a tiny restaurant down the street. Rumor had it that the two families had belonged to different tongs in China and brought their ancient feud
with them to America. Which probably explained why every now
and then somebody’d find a dead Chinaman stuffed in an alley
garbage can with his throat cut, or floating in the channel with a wire
garrote still around his neck. But they were only Chinamen, so you
never read about them in the papers except now and then as a little
filler on a back page, saying something like
FOREIGNER FOUND

In this part of town too was an isolated street of a half-dozen
houses and some three dozen residents, all of them Mexican. Though
the residents called it La Colonia, the street had no sign and did not
appear on the city maps. It was too small of an enclave to qualify as a
quarter, but there weren’t all that many Mexes on the island to begin
with, and this was one of the few neighborhoods of them.

I’d been in Galveston about three months when I stumbled onto
it. I was wandering the streets north of the redlight district one
humid night and caught the peppery scent of Mexican cooking. I followed the smell to a dirt lane branching from Mechanic Street near a
hazy amber streetlamp. The lane cut through a scrubby vacant lot before passing through a dark hollow of mossy oaks and magnolias to
dead-end at the railtracks. In the shadows of the overhanging trees

the little frame houses stood in a ragged row along the left side of the
lane. Their porchlights were on and their windows were brightly yellow. Light also showed against the underbranches of the trees in a
backyard about midway down the street and I heard music coming
from behind the house. Accordion and fiddle and guitar playing “Tu,
Solo Tu.” I’d heard the tune a hundred times but now it reminded me
of a moment less than three years past that seemed like ancient history, reminded me of a packed-dirt dance floor under a desert nightsky blasting with stars, of dancing close with a pretty Mexican girl to
this same song as my cousin Reuben and my friend Chente danced
with a pair of blond sisters....

The roast-pepper aroma had grown stronger, and mingling into it
were the smells of maize tortillas and refried beans. I went around to
the lit-up backyard and found a small party going on.

Couples were dancing on a wide patch of bare dirt, kicking and
swirling and spinning each other around in the cast of light from
lanterns hung on tree branches. A kid spotted me and told the people gathered at a long picnic table loaded with bowls of food, and
they looked over at me. One of the men approached me, removing his
hat, and I took mine off too.

The lantern light was full on my face and I could tell by his look
that he could see the color of my eyes. I’d seen such inquisitive stares
more times than I could count.

“Buenas noches,” he said, and added, “Good evening,” in deference
to the possibility that I spoke only English.
In Spanish I apologized for intruding and told him I’d smelled the
food and heard the music and wanted to see what was going on.
His face brightened and he beckoned me to join them, saying,
“Pase, caballero, por favor. Nuestra casa es su casa.”
His name was Arturo Alcanzas and he was host of the party. The
others also welcomed me warmly, everyone speaking in Spanish. They
introduced themselves all around and made room for me at the table

bench. They admired my suit and boots, the briefcase I kept at my
side. They tried not to stare too obviously at my eyes. The musicians
finished the number and came over to the table and Arturo introduced them too, three brothers named Gutierrez. They called themselves Los Tres Payasos, and though they modestly professed not to be
very good, Alcanzas said they were good enough to get hired to play
at small fiestas and quinceañeras from Port Arthur to Bay City.

Someone fetched me a bottle of Carta Blanca from a tub packed
with ice. A bowl of fried jalapeños was set close to me on one side and
a platter of chicharrones on the other. While I munched on the chiles
and pork rinds some of the women passed around a plate for me, filling it with red rice, beans, spiced shredded pork. A young girl placed
a wicker basket of corn tortillas within my reach.

I told them my name and their faces showed curiosity about it, but
their natural politeness restrained them from asking how I had come
by it. One who spoke English told the others that James meant Santiago, and everyone was pleased by this and addressed me by that
name from then on. When one of the men remarked that I spoke with
the accent of the western frontera, some of the others made faces of
reprimand for his breach of manners with such familiarity. He looked
chastened and assured me he’d meant no disrespect. I assured him I’d
perceived none. I told them I’d grown up along the Chihuahua and
Texas border, and they said “Ah, pues,” and nodded at each other
around the table as though I had clarified a great deal.

They told me all about themselves. The first of them to settle here
had named the little street La Colonia Tamaulipas, in honor of their
home state, but over time it simply became La Colonia. Many of them
were related by blood or marriage and were from Matamoros, just the
other side of the Rio Grande. Others were from Victoria, Monterrey,
Tampico. “Pero todos venimos con espaldas mojadas,” one of them
said with a smile, joking about the wetback fashion in which they’d
all crossed the river. Some of the men had found work on the docks,