“And when was that?” Rawlings said.
“Almost three hours ago,” Mrs. Trego said woefully, as if it might as well have been a lifetime.
Showing her to the door a few minutes later, he casually asked, “Do you happen to know Sandy Saunders?”
“Who?”
“Never mind,” Rawlings said. “I’ll see what I can do.” It was apparent from the puzzled expression on her face that she’d never heard of the bastard. So maybe it was true after all, maybe Jasper was stepping over the line. He sent out a message for him to report to the office as soon as possible. Something had to be done before his underling seriously fucked up and they both lost their jobs.
It was nearly quitting time when Jasper finally showed up. As usual, the day had been one shitty mess after another, and the stench coming off his clothes and rubber boots in the close confines of the office overwhelmed Rawlings to the extent that he nearly forgot why he had summoned him in the first place. It was only after he jerked a window open and sucked down several drafts of fresh air that he regained his bearings. He sheepishly thought of the mustard gas being used on men in Europe. Perhaps his ex-wife had been right after all, maybe he really was a candy-ass. With his head still hanging out over the sill, he told Jasper, “From now on, you only inspect an outhouse if my office gets a complaint, understand?”
“But you told me to crack down on—”
“Yeah, but hell, boy, you’re going overboard,” Rawlings said. He took one more deep breath of outside air, then cautiously left the window and moved over to his desk. Personally, as far as the engineer was concerned, the push for indoor plumbing in Meade was worth any number of old ladies, but he was beginning to sense that maybe he had picked the wrong man for the job. He fiddled with a pencil for a moment, then asked, “Do you know a Mrs. Trego over on Church Street?”
“Not really,” Jasper said a bit hesitantly. “More like I know of her. Why?”
“I think you know what I’m talkin’ about,” Rawlings said angrily, snapping the pencil in two and throwing it across the room. “My God, Cone, they put people in prison for less than that. It’s no more than a step or two away from rape. I’m warning you, if you can’t abide by the rules, I’ll have to let you go.”
“What do ye mean?”
“Just what I said.”
“Ye’d actually fire me?”
“I won’t have any choice if you don’t straighten up.”
“Did Sandy Saunders put you up to this?” Jasper said.
“What? Of course not. You think I’d take orders from someone that sells goddamn insurance?”
“So cleanin’ up the town was just talk.”
“No, of course not, but we’ve got to use common sense.”
“Why? Nobody else does.”
“I don’t give a damn what anybody else does,” Rawlings said. “From now on out, you don’t look in anybody’s shithouse unless there’s a legitimate complaint. And you make sure it’s not in use before you even think of opening the door. I was the one that pushed for you to get this job, but if you embarrass me one more time, I’ll hang your ass out to dry.”
—
DISAPPOINTED AND SADDENED that his boss would bend so easily in the face of a little opposition, Jasper went out to the city landfill that evening with his buffalo gun, intending to blow off some steam. However, when he arrived, he saw the dump keeper’s shanty door open and decided to pay him a visit before he went hunting for any rats. Back when he was working as a scavenger, Jasper had talked to Bagshaw nearly every day, but since taking on the inspection job, he’d barely seen him at all. He set his rifle down outside the door and entered. Bagshaw, a squat, ruddy-faced man with a pitted lump of a nose, was relaxing on a settee that had the horsehair stuffing coming out of it, his feet propped up on a wooden crate. He was eating a black, mushy banana. A barrel stove sat against the back wall, a dented tin chimney running out the roof. A hodgepodge of women’s shoes, collected over the course of the last decade, were piled up in one corner, a towering stack of old newspapers and catalogs in another. Children’s toys, in various states of decrepitude, hung from the rafters on rusty wires. “Wanta ’nanner?” Bagshaw asked.
“No, thank ye,” Jasper said. “I ain’t hungry.”
“Found a whole sack of ’em a couple days ago. All the years I been doin’ this, and I still can’t get over the things people throw away. Ye’d think the whole town was made up of millionaires.”
“I wish I was one of ’em,” Jasper said.
“Why?” Bagshaw said. “What would you do different?”
“I’d quit my job and build the biggest bathroom this country’s ever seen.”
“What? I thought you loved that job,” the dump keeper said, pitching the banana peel out the door.
“Not anymore. Every time I turn around, somebody’s complaining.”
“I know what that’s like,” Bagshaw said. “Agnes is always on my ass about something.”
“Agnes?” Jasper said. “Who’s that?” All the time he’d been coming out here, he’d never heard the dump keeper mention anything about having a woman, but maybe he’d just met her.
“The one hangin’ right above your head there with the pretty blue eyes. I’ll tell ye, boy, she can be a handful when she’s in one of her moods.”
Jasper twisted his neck and looked up. The doll had a crack running down the middle of its porcelain face, and half its red hair had been singed off by fire. Probably a kid playing with matches, he figured. The blue eyes were staring back down at him with an air of haughty superiority. “Oh,” he said to the dump keeper. “I didn’t know who you meant there for a minute.” Then he glanced out the door at the pile of banana skins and heaved a sigh.
Bagshaw pulled at his chin and studied his young visitor, the pith helmet in his lap and the gloomy, dejected look on his face. He hadn’t seen the boy so down in the mouth since Itchy had croaked. This was one of those situations, he realized, where the wisdom of an older, more experienced man such as himself was called for. Even Agnes asked him for advice on occasion, and she was one of the sharpest people he’d ever met. “You know what you need, Jasper?”
“What’s that?”
“A friend,” the dump keeper said, nodding sagely, “a real friend. You find you one of them, you won’t need no suitcase full of money or fancy shithouse to make you happy. Believe me, it makes a big difference wakin’ up every day knowing you got somebody you can talk to, someone you can depend on.” Then, with rotten banana oozing thick as paste through the few teeth he had left in his head, he looked up at the doll and smiled.
45
IT WAS GETTING late in the day when Chimney looked up and saw two men sitting in a carriage watching them from the road. “Friends of yours?” he asked Ellsworth.
The farmer stopped in the middle of wrapping a piece of twine around a shock of corn and turned to look. It was Ovid and Augustus Singleton. “Not hardly,” he said, just as one of them took off his hat and waved.
“Wonder what they want then?” Chimney said.
“Nothing,” Ellsworth said. “They’re just being nosy.” He handed Cane the ball of twine, then started up through the field. “Don’t worry. I’ll get rid of them.” Right before the boys came in for breakfast this morning, Eula had mentioned that she thought there might be more to their situation than what they were letting on. “Don’t it seem a little strange to you,” she said, “them willin’ to pay all that money to sleep in a barn?” He had chosen not to tell her about the stubby pistols he saw in their pockets, or the way they glanced about uneasily whenever they heard the slightest noise. As hard as they worked, he could tell that they hadn’t been lying about all the farming they had done, but there also wasn’t any doubt in his mind that some sort of trouble had brought them here. “What do ye want me to do? Tell them to leave?” he’d asked her, resisting the urge to point out that she was the one who had made the deal with them. “No, no,” she said, “I just wondered what you th
ought.” Since it was the first time she had asked his opinion about anything since he had lost their savings, he considered carefully for a minute before answering. “Well, unless they start causin’ trouble,” he told her, “let’s just figure it’s none of our business.” And now, as far as he was concerned, that went double for the Singleton brothers.
“What the hell did he mean by that?” Chimney asked Cane as they watched the farmer approach the carriage.
“I don’t know,” Cane said.
“Think he’s got us figured out?”
“If he has, he don’t seem too worried about it.”
“Maybe Cob’s been runnin’ his mouth to the old woman,” Chimney said.
“Let’s just wait and see,” Cane said. “Maybe he didn’t mean nothing at all.”
At the edge of the field, Ellsworth stopped and nodded to the Singletons. Despite it being a rather warm day, they both wore heavy black coats and gloves. “You need something?” he asked them impatiently.
“We noticed you got yourself some help,” Augustus said. He was waving a little paper fan in front of his face that advertised Smith’s funeral home in Bainbridge.
“So?”
“Well, we were just trying to figure out who they were. From here, they sort of look like Sawyer Brown’s boys.”
“They’re nobody,” Ellsworth said. “Just a couple boys from Pike County needin’ work.”
“Pike County?” Ovid said. He cast a cocky leer over at his brother. “Did ye hear that, Auggie? You’d think ol’ Fiddler would have enough sense to stay away from there after what happened last fall.”
“Moo,” Augustus said, and they elbowed each other and began laughing.
Ellsworth’s face turned red and his hands tightened into fists. So they’d found out about the cattle swindle. And if they knew, that meant everybody in the entire goddamn township knew. Since it had happened down in the next county, he had hoped to keep it a secret, and he wondered now if Eddie had betrayed him. The boy had sworn to keep quiet about it, but he had proven time and again that any promises he made sober were easily forgotten once he got some alcohol in him. Jesus Christ, people were probably spending entire evenings over at Parker’s store cackling about it. He recalled going over there one night right after Royal Sullivan sent away for a mail-order bride who turned out to be deaf as a stone and dumb as a post. For three hours they’d gone on about it, joke after joke. And she hadn’t cost but seventy-five dollars. That was peanuts compared to the thousand he had lost. And at least Royal still had something to show for his money, no matter how useless the woman was when it came to following commands. Ellsworth looked up at the two in the carriage, still poking each other in the ribs and hee-hawing. It seemed like every time he came across them, they tried to cut him down. And he’d been having a damn good day, too. He started to turn away from them when he suddenly remembered something else he had heard over at the store one evening after Ovid and Augustus had taken off for home, the way they always did the minute the evening sun slid behind the big evergreen that stood in front of Dave Moody’s house, no matter what the season. He waited until they stopped to catch their breath, then said, “So is it true what people say, that ye hold each other’s hand when you go to the shithouse?” He heard them both gasp, watched the blood drain out of their faces. Without another word, Ovid smacked one old nag’s hindquarters with a long willow switch, and the rickety carriage heaved forward with a lurch. Good God, Ellsworth thought, as he watched them disappear over the slight rise in the dusty road, he’d always thought the story was just another one of Parker’s wild tales, but maybe it was true after all. Even though he didn’t give one iota for either of them, he almost wished he hadn’t mentioned it. Things had to be tough, being that fucked-up, no matter who you were.
46
FOUR FEET OF water and a muddy bottom had broken Sugar’s fall from the bridge. After the initial shock, he took account of himself as best he could with his hands tied behind his back and determined that nothing was broken. He got to his feet and managed to get his razor from his pocket and cut the ropes that bound him, then struggled up the riverbank. The campfire glared above him by the tracks, and he could hear the men laughing, as if what they had done to him was no different than killing a dog or a possum. Though his legs were wobbly, he began walking, water dripping from his clothes, squishing from his shoes. He reached up to feel a knot on the back of his head. His nose throbbed, and he tasted blood in his mouth. The moon came out from behind some clouds and showed him a way through the cattails and brambles. He headed on south.
The next afternoon, he arrived in Shadesville. He walked through the little burg with its grocery and barbershop and post office, and went out the other side past the Baptist church. He continued another quarter mile until he came to the house he had been born in. It was empty. Sugar stood there for quite a while looking at it, weather-beaten and leaning a little eastward with two smallish rooms and a wood-shingled roof. It was hard to believe, he thought, that nine people had once lived there together. Shit, the apartment he had shared with Flora was twice as big. He went up the three rotten steps and through the unlocked door. Except for a rusty hairpin he found lying on one of the two windowsills, the house was completely bare inside; and judging from the dust on the floor, he figured nobody had been there in a long time. He was so tired that he didn’t feel anything, not even disappointment.
An hour later, he went back into town and saw an old man sitting on a bench in front of the post office. “You ’member me?” Sugar asked.
The man examined him for a minute with yellow eyeballs, then cleared his throat. “Can’t say I do.”
“Don’t matter,” Sugar said. “Them Milfords that lived down the road there, where’d they all go off to?”
“Oh, they ain’t lived around here for several years now,” the old man said. “Not since the mother passed. I think maybe they went to Detroit. They always claimed one of their brothers was up there makin’ good money buildin’ them automobiles, but only a fool would have ever believed that shit. I knew that boy well, and he never was nothing but a liar and a blowhard. George, I think his name was. He’d brag about gettin’ up in the morning, that boy. Like he’d done something big, just by cracking his eyes open. Most worthless nigger ever come out of Shadesville, if ye ask me. I warned them others not to go, but they wouldn’t listen. Shoot, I’d say they probably all dead or locked up by now.”
Sugar scowled and turned away. So his mother was dead. It didn’t surprise him really, now that he thought of it; she could barely get out of her chair the day he’d left. He looked up and saw the cemetery on the little knob behind the grocery. Crossing the road, he found her resting place a few minutes later, a rock with her name scratched on it marking the head of it. The only store-bought stone in the entire graveyard belonged to Mrs. Hitchens, whose son, Marcel, had gone to a Negro college in Alabama and made good. Fucking stuck-up bastard, always wearing that goddamn blue tie and carrying a book under his arm. Getting down on his knees, Sugar started clearing the plot of weeds and dead leaves. He was nearly done when a great tiredness overcame him. He stretched out on the ground in the warm sunlight and closed his eyes. When he awoke several hours later, he made his way back down the hill to the grocery and bought three slices of longhorn cheese and a handful of crackers and a bottle of milk from a young girl with a rag tied around her head and a colicky baby balanced on her hip. He ate his supper out front. Across the dirt road, a group of young black men had replaced the old man on the bench in front of the post office. They were talking loudly and passing a bottle around. Bedrolls and carpetbags lay on the ground about them. Sugar finished his meal and walked over. They were from all over the county, from Fish Creek to Sourdough, and they told him they were going to join Uncle Sam’s army. A man with a wagon was supposed to pick them up in the morning and take them to Lexington.
Sugar laughed. “They ain’t gonna take no niggers in the army,” he said.
“Oh, yes
, they are, boy,” a tall, heavy man with a loud, confident voice said. Sugar glanced over at him coolly. His front teeth were missing and he had no shoes, but he was wearing a new pair of bibs, and it was evident from the way he rocked back and forth on his bare heels with his thumbs hooked under the brass buttons on the shoulder straps that he thought he was hot shit. If you didn’t know better, you’d have thought he was a well-to-do land baron standing on a balcony among a bunch of his lackeys, surveying his vast holdings.
For a moment, Sugar thought about how stupid and childish the man looked. He doubted if the poor sonofabitch had fifty cents in his pocket. But then he remembered the smug way he had felt right after purchasing the bowler, and his stomach clenched up a little. King of the world for just $2.95. Christ, he was no better than this fucking clown. “Where’d you hear that?” he asked, swallowing some watery bile.
“Show him, Brownie,” the big man said.
A boy with bubbly white blisters around his mouth pulled a flyer from inside his homespun shirt and handed it over. Sugar scanned the drawing of a black man with thick lips and a broad nose dressed in a sharply creased uniform and saluting. Though it looked official, he still doubted the veracity of it. He figured someone was passing them around as a joke, like the ones he had seen in Detroit last winter promising five hundred dollars and twenty acres to any colored person over the age of eighteen who showed up at the courthouse in Fairbanks, Alaska, during the month of February. A dozen had frozen to death trying to make that journey, and several hundred more stranded before someone figured out it was all a hoax. It was just naturally assumed that some white folks were responsible, so imagine everyone’s surprise when it was discovered that a colored boy who swept up nights at a printing press was the culprit. His reason? Nobody knew. He disappeared the same night someone ratted him out, and by the time his body was discovered hanging like a side of beef in the back of a meat locker eight weeks later, it was too late to ask.