“How much you pay?”
“A dollar for a good day’s work,” Ellsworth said. “Plus’n a good breakfast.” He thought about throwing in a jar of wine every evening, but realized that might backfire on him, especially if the man turned out to be anything like Eddie or his Uncle Peanut.
Four quarters and a bowl of mush, Sugar thought. A man who would trade even one day of his short time on earth for that might as well crawl into a cave and be done with it. Still, why not have a little fun with the cheap-ass motherfucker before he headed off? “Last man I worked for,” Sugar said, “he paid three dollars a day.”
“Three dollars!”
“Yes, sir, he did. And he fed us breakfast, lunch, and dinner, too. Me and another boy didn’t have no arms. Sausages and flapjacks and pork chops and mashed taters and corn on the cob. Then on Sundays we laid under a shade tree in his front yard and et on a big ol’ chicken his old lady fried up for us. And like I said, the other boy, he had both his arms cut off, so I did most of the work. Couldn’t even wipe his own ass. Had to have the farmer do it for him. Lord, though, that boy could sing. He could coax a woman into anything.”
“Holy Christ in a manger, I do that I might as well burn the damn field down.”
“Pretty women, too,” Sugar went on. “Not no dogs. And I mean anything. Why, he spent most of his time laying in the barn trying to think up new stuff for them to do. They flocked to him like hens to a rooster. Don’t seem right, does it?” Then he turned and started on down the road without another word, a toothy grin spreading across his face.
Ellsworth stood in the dust for a while and waited on the man to come back, thinking that no matter what he had said, it would be one rich colored boy who would turn down a dollar a day, but Sugar just kept walking until he disappeared over the next rise. He had a hard time believing there was a farmer somewhere who could afford to pay a single man anything close to three greenbacks a day, or feed pork chops and whole chickens to his help. Nor keep a crippled songbird around whose only job was to chase whores all day! He began to worry that this might be another symptom of these modern times, paying a man more than he’d ever be worth, and perhaps even paying him for nothing at all. Why, if he could find someone who would treat him that good, he might chop off his own arms and hire himself out for regular wages.
And who in their right mind would walk forty miles to see some water? Ellsworth swiped at a fly buzzing around his head and looked across the road to the woods. Maybe the boy had just let on that he was going to the river. Perhaps he was hiding over there in the trees right now, watching him. He had heard they could be sneaky like that, slip up behind you and lift your pocketbook right out of your pants without you feeling a thing. He walked back down into the field and reached into a groundhog hole for the jar of wine he had hidden there yesterday. He took a long drink, reminded himself to lock the doors tonight in case the spying bastard followed him home. Setting the jar back in the hole, he started cutting on another row of corn. Sweat ran down his face and stung his eyes, dripped off his nose. By God, he would show that boy what he meant by a good day’s work. He hesitated a moment, then began to sing.
37
THAT EVENING, JUST as Sugar decided he had walked far enough for one day, three grimy, unshaven men came around a bend in the road on horses and reined to a stop a few feet in front of him. Two of them wore cowboy hats and overalls while the third’s attire consisted of a dusty frock coat and black trousers. A bloody piece of a white shirt was tied around the thigh of the heaviest one. Rifles protruded from their saddles and pistols hung from holsters belted around their waists. They looked to Sugar as if they had accidently stepped out of some bygone era and were searching for a way back to where they belonged. It wouldn’t have been the first time that someone ended up trapped in a time that didn’t quite suit them. He’d lived for a while with a woman who started coming home every night from her job in a millinery and dressing up like an Egyptian princess. Figuring she was just bored, he put up with the crazy costume for a while, but when she began praying to crocodiles and talking about him escorting her into the Underworld, he’d decided it was time to shag ass.
“Well, I’ll be goddamned,” Chimney said. “What we got here?”
“Gentlemen,” Sugar said, nervously tipping his bowler. He swallowed and tried not to stare at their guns. He thought of his razor, but what use would it do to pull it out? These men would have him dead before he could even snap it open.
“Where ye going, boy?” Chimney asked.
“Headed for the river,” Sugar said.
“The Ohio?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s quite a ways on foot.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Anything up this road?”
“Not much unless you like lookin’ at cows and chickens.”
“What’s your name?”
“Sugar.”
“You hear that, boys? His ol’ mama thought he was so sweet she named him Sugar.”
“That ain’t my real name,” Sugar said quickly. Although it didn’t make any goddamn difference what these bastards thought of him, he still didn’t want them to think that his mother didn’t have the sense to give him a proper name. “It’s just the one I go by.”
“Well, if I was you, I’d start looking for a new one,” Chimney said. “Makes ye sound like a pony.” He leaned over his saddle and spat, then looked up and down the road. “I bet you got some ol’ gal down there on the river, don’t ye? That’s why you got that fancy hat on.”
“No,” Sugar said, “just going to see my people is all.”
“Come on,” Cane said. “We don’t have time for this.” It was their third day in Ohio, and for the most part they were still riding at night. This morning they had made it as far as Buchanan, and, just before dawn, ended up in a soggy marsh filled with rotten logs. The rib cage of a deer had rested on a small ferny island rising up in the middle of the foul-smelling morass. After breakfasting on Chimney’s last two strands of licorice, they’d spread their blankets on a thick bed of pokeweed and nightshade and settled down as best they could. They had endured it until late afternoon, but finally agreed, though there were still several hours of daylight left, that even getting killed or raped by a posse would be better than the torture being inflicted upon them by the hordes of late-season mosquitoes and black gnats swarming over their stinking skin. They were as worn-out and miserable as they had ever been, and Cane was more determined than ever to find somewhere clean and safe to rest up for a couple of days.
“I don’t know, I surely do like that hat,” Chimney said.
“Well, then, buy ye one,” Cane said. “They probably sell lids like that everywhere.”
“Not that one, they don’t.”
Cane let out a long, exasperated sigh. “Then just take the goddamn thing.”
“No, I got a better idea,” Chimney said. Pulling the Lee-Enfield from a leather scabbard tied with rawhide to his saddle, he ratcheted a shell into the chamber and looked at Sugar. “Here’s the way it’s gonna work. I’m a-goin’ to let you make a run for it. And if I can knock that hat off your head, then it’s all mine, understand? And if I can’t, well, it’s yours to go on wearing down to the river or wherever the fuck it is you’re really going.”
“Brother, why would ye want that thing?” Cob asked, the first words he had uttered in hours. “It looks like something ye’d take a shit in.”
“Ha!” Cane said. “That’s a good one.”
“Well, I hadn’t thought of that, Cob, but maybe I will. Be mine to do with as I please, right?”
Sugar jerked the bowler off his head and attempted to hand it up to Chimney. “Here, mister, I don’t want it anyway. It’s all yours for the keeping, free of charge.”
“There,” Cane said. “It’s settled.”
“No, it’s not,” Chimney said. He scratched his chin and looked about, then pointed at a woods on the other side of a field overgrown with wild roses
and goldenrod and white-flowered asters. “See them trees over there?” he said to the black man. “You put the hat back on and run that way. I promise ye I’ll count to thirty before I cut loose.”
“Please, mister,” Sugar said, “they no need to do this. I don’t even want—”
“Better get to moving, boy. One, two, three…”
Sugar looked around wildly, then leaped off the side of the road down into the pasture and started running for the tree line, his arms pumping like pistons and his legs stepping high and the sticker bushes ripping at his flesh.
“But this don’t make no sense,” Cob said. “He tried to give it to ye.”
Ignoring his brother, Chimney kept counting, but at twenty he stopped and settled the rifle on his shoulder. Even after the bowler fell off the black man’s head, he seemed intent on shooting. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. But just as he started to squeeze the trigger, a loud blast went off beside him and his horse lurched sideways, causing his own shot to fly harmlessly into the sky. He watched his target dive into some tall weeds. “What the fuck?”
Cane put his pistol back in his holster. “Don’t ever pull no stunt like that again. What the hell’s wrong with you?”
“Jesus, no sense in gettin’ so excited. I was just going to scare him a little, that’s all.”
“Yeah,” Cane said, “I bet you were. Well, hurry up, it’ll be dark before long.”
“Hurry up what?” said Chimney.
“Go find that hat.”
“Shit, you think I really wanted that goddamn thing?”
“I don’t care if you did or not,” Cane said. “Get your ass down there.”
A few minutes later, as they sat watching Chimney in the field cursing and flailing at the weeds, Cob said to Cane, “I bet that feller’s mad that he lost his hat. Ye could tell he was proud of it.”
“Yeah, he probably was. Hard to say how long he had to save up for that thing.”
“Wonder why he calls himself Sugar, if that ain’t his real name?” Cob asked. “That seems kind of dumb to me. How’s anybody supposed to know who he really is?”
“Well, maybe he don’t like…” Cane started to say, but then he stopped. He looked over at Cob, at his cowboy hat and the red bandanna tied around his fat, sweaty neck and the pistol hanging at his side. He was the spitting image of the drawing on the last wanted poster they had seen, the one the store clerk had carried. Jesus Christ, why hadn’t he thought of that before? By the time Chimney found the bowler and made it back up to the road, Cane was in the process of changing their names and working on a line they could use. From here on out, he announced, at least until they crossed the border, he and Cob were Tom and Junior Bradford from Milledgeville, Georgia, and Chimney was their cousin, Hollis Stubbs. They were on their way to Canada to find an uncle.
“That’s it?” Chimney said. “Seems a little thin to me.” He set the bowler between his horse’s ears.
“We need to keep it as simple as possible. That way there’s less chance of screwing up.”
“What brought this on?”
“Something Cob said about the colored boy. I should have thought of it before.”
“You must be startin’ to slip if you got Cob giving you advice,” Chimney said.
“We got to change our looks, too,” Cane said, ignoring him. “Get rid of those cowboy hats and the neckerchiefs. And stick your pistols in your saddlebags.”
“You mean all of them?”
Cane stopped and considered for a few seconds. “No, you’re right. Maybe we better each keep one handy just in case.”
As they got ready to leave a few minutes later, Chimney said, “I still don’t feel right about you takin’ that shot away from me. I need to keep in practice.”
Without a word, Cane grabbed the bowler off the horse’s head and tossed it to the ground a few feet in front of them. “Go ahead then, have at it.” Chimney smirked a little and pulled out his Smith & Wesson. Every time he fired, the hat skidded and tumbled a little farther down the road. He didn’t stop until the gun was empty. “There, ye satisfied?” Cane asked.
“I don’t know,” Chimney said, as he dug some bullets out of his pocket to reload. “But I reckon it’ll do till something better comes along.”
38
CRAWLING ON HIS belly until he reached the woods, Sugar then ran for another quarter of a mile or so before collapsing behind a fallen tree. He stayed there barely moving a muscle for over an hour. At one point he counted six shots being fired, and he hoped that maybe the motherfuckers had killed one another before one of them picked up his bowler. Finally, he got up the courage to sneak back to the field to look for it, but it was nowhere to be found. He kicked at the weeds and cursed his bad luck. The finest hat he had ever owned and now some sonofabitch dressed like Billy the Kid was going to take a dump in it.
He made his way through the field and back up the bank. Yellow-winged grasshoppers flew up in front of him. He hadn’t gone but a few yards down the flat road when he came upon the remains of the bowler, still smoldering a little around the edges of the bullet holes. Goddamn them! What kind of sick sonsofbitches would do something like that? He would have given anything just then, even the rest of his time on earth, for the chance to slit that skinny ferret-looking bastard’s throat with his razor. Or, if not that, at least to be shacked up for the night with a whore and a bottle and a good dinner. He didn’t think that was asking too much out of life. The thought of it swept over him like a tempest, driving him half insane, and he flung his arms about in frustration and anger. As his rage mounted, he thought again about his people in Kentucky, that poor bunch of God-fearing, Hallelujah-shouting, ass-kissing sharecroppers. Not once had they ever given him credit for anything. Everybody was against him, even his own mother. And when she finally kicked him out, he had made his way across the Ohio and headed for Detroit, telling them all when he left to go fuck themselves, that he was going to get a job building those fancy motorcars everyone was talking about, and bragging that the next time they saw his black ass, he’d own a whole fleet of them, one for each day of the week. Not only that, he’d have a white man for a chauffeur, and another just to keep them shined up and ready to roll at a moment’s notice.
That had been over a decade ago, and he had lasted exactly two weeks working for Mr. Ford. With his first paycheck, he had bought a cheap suit and a toothbrush and went out for a drink. Five days later, he woke up sick with a hangover in a damp basement room curled up next to a woman he’d met in an after-hours club out celebrating her fifty-seventh birthday. She gave him the first blow job of his life that morning while he chewed on a piece of the tough flank steak she fried him for breakfast; and he realized, as he watched her gray head bob up and down in his lap, that with as many women as there were in a city the size of Detroit, a young man could get by without hitting a lick if he wasn’t too particular about what he laid with at night. He had stayed with her two months, until he’d spent every last dime she had saved up for her old age, and then he had moved on to a friend of hers whose husband had just died of a heart attack. Over the years he had pretty much stuck to the same strategy, squeezing all he could out of them, and then finding some excuse to leave as soon as they started hinting around that he needed to find a job. But then he met Flora, a pretty woman in her forties with an appetite for young bucks and a big, round ass like two ripe pumpkins fitted together. She made good money managing a laundry over on Beacon Street for a white man, and Sugar decided that maybe it was time to settle down. Every evening for the next eight months she came home to a clean apartment and supper cooking on the stove, and he thought everything was going just fine until one night she appeared in the kitchen with a long-legged, freckle-faced boy who couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen years old. “Who this?” Sugar said as he set out the plates on the table, thinking it was probably another one of her goddamn relatives looking for a free meal or a corner to sleep in.
“This here be Winston,
” she said. “He’s my new man.”
“Your what?” Sugar said, whirling around to look at the boy again, standing there with a cocky grin on his face. “What you talkin’ about, woman?”
“Look, honey, I ’preciate all this moppin’ and tater peelin’ you been doing, but truth is, I got no use for a maid.”
“Maid! I’ll show you a goddamn maid.” He took a step toward her, brandishing a fork in his hand.
“Oh, no, you won’t,” she said calmly. “You’ll be packing your fuckin’ clothes and gettin’ out, that’s what you be doing. And just in case you think you goin’ to start some trouble, you better look out the window first. All’s I got to do is say the word and they’ll be in here on you like stink on shit.”
Sugar stepped over and pushed the curtain back. A pair of squat, burly men he’d seen a few times at Leroy’s, a gin joint he and Flora frequented on Saturday nights, were standing on the steps looking back at him. One was tapping a truncheon against his leg as if he were keeping the beat to some song in his head, and the other was peeling an apple with a pig-sticker. Jesus Christ, she was serious. He turned and looked at the brown gravy simmering in the skillet, the pork chops stacked on the platter in the middle of the table. “But why?” he asked, his voice now sounding almost plaintive.
“To be honest, I need somethin’ with a little more pep when I crawl under the covers at night, that’s all.”
“Well, shit, why didn’t you say so? You want more meat, by God, let a man give it to you. You don’t need this young punk.”
“No, you done had your chance, and I done made my decision,” she said. She opened her purse and pulled out a five-dollar bill. “Here, you take this and go get your stuff packed up. There’s some things me and Winston need to discuss.” The boy winked at Sugar, then pulled a chair back at the kitchen table and sat down. After adjusting the bulge in his pants, he reached over and picked up one of the pork chops. Before he took a bite, he ran it back and forth under his nose several times, loudly sniffing it.