And Minnie says, Coloreds crybabyin' about they skin don't get no sympathy from me... mock-drawling to make sure the import of her message is clear.
For the past eleven years Minnie Fairchild has had steady, good-paying employment with Dr. M. R. O'Shaughnessy, a general practitioner of some reputation in Hammond, who has his office in his home in the shabby-genteel neighborhood of Franklin Square.
Two city buses are required to get Minnie to work and home again.
At first Minnie did ordinary housework and cooked occasional meals; then, following the death of Dr. O'Shaughnessy's wife, there came a period of what the doctor called "retrenchment," and Minnie was assigned more and more household responsibilities and even, in time, replaced Dr. O'Shaughnessy's office nurse... though Minnie is untrained as a nurse, or even as a nurse's aide. (" Nothing to it, Minnie boasts to her friends. The main thing is the uniform: you look the part, folks think that's what you are. For years Minnie has been bringing home all sorts of things for her family given to her by doctor O'Shaughnessy or appropriated from his office: samples from pharmaceutical companies of mouthwash, deodorants, muscle relaxants pills to aid digestion, pills to combat constipation, pills to combat diarrhea, headache pills, sleeping pills, stay awake pills.
tins of Band Aids, sanitary napkins, cotton batting. bottles of eyewash and dandruff shampoo. bars of complexion soap made with an oatmeal base. The drawers of the house are chock full of such things, and the medicine cabinet in the bathroom is a true cornucopia. Momma, what's these? Bea would cry, snatching up the latest item. If it wasn't the case that the Fairchild children were the healthiest in the neighborhood, they were at least the best equipped for sickness.
In addition to helping doctor O'Shaughnessy with his patients, most of whom are older women, and overseeing the household, Minnie Fairchild also does bookkeeping for the doctor, whose financial re cords are in a muddle; she pays most of the household bills and arranges for re pairs to the house. doctor O'Shaughnessy lives in a beautiful old 1890s brick house, over large for a widower whose children are all scattered and indifferent, and this house is in constant need of re pairs and renovations What would I do without you, Minnie? doctor O'Shaughnessy often asks with a sigh, and Minnie laughs modestly and says, Reckon you'd get along, doctor! though she doesn't believe this for a minute.
O'Shaughnessy is a good hearted but vague man in his mid sixties, white haired, dignified, patrician in his manner and appearance; and, weekdays at least, never less than stone cold sober until evening.
Minnie shares his secret: he drinks steadily from six o'clock until midnight each weekday night, and on Saturdays and Sundays the drinking hour shifts to noon; and, sometimes, on Sundays, he will inject himself with a mild shot of morphine in order to endure the sabbath. But, as Minnie says, she doesn't judge white folks: leastways not this class of white folks.
Increasingly, these past years, doctor O'Shaughnessy has spoken of are membering Minnie in his will.
Not that I believe it for one minute, Minnie says.
Nothing has given Minnie quite so much pleasure in her adult life as the lung tales of doctor M. R. O'Shaughnessy to her women friends, her tone sometimes comical and derisive, sometimes defensive, more often reverential How's the doctor, Minnie? a woman friend will ask, grinning in anticipation, and Minnie will throw up her hands and say laughingly, No worse! and the friend will ask, That man still got patients, the way he behave? and Minnie will say, Got lots. These rich old white ladies, they'd never go to anyone else; they figure doctor O'Shaughnessy's seen everything they got and seen it bloat and sag and collapse and go gray, or bald, year after year. Also he takes care not to hurt them any with his instruments I got to warm themand won't ever tell them anything they'd be fearful of hearing. What better kind of M. D.
would you want? Lord, this sad old creature that came in today, all diamonds and furs on the outside, and her swanky chocolate cream chauffeur had to help her up the steps. And Minnie makes her listener explode into peals of laughter with a graphic description of a patient whom Minnie in her nurse's function had to undress, and then dress, a nightmare of fallen flabby flesh like collapsed bread dough, hundreds of hooks and eyes to latch up in the woman's whalebone corset and brassiere. If I ever get that bad off, I pray my children will put me out of my misery! Minnie says, wiping tears of laughter from her cheeks.
Minnie Fairchild isn't religious, or even superstitious. Not a bit.
Not since leaving her mother's house. She has a weakness for gospel singing on the radio, Mahalia Jackson and the Caravans her favorites, but all the re st of it, Jesus Christ and that crew, it's white folks' foolishness or outright trickery. The only earth the meek ever inherited was earth nobody else gave a damn for. says Minnie.
As a small boy, Jinx Fairchild was in the presence of his mother's legendary employer several times; once, the portly smiling white man pressed a silver dollar into the palm of Jinx's hand, and another time he stooped to confide in him, Your mother's the salt of the earth!
Even then, Jinx took offense at the man's very praise of his mother.
Earth, he thought, earth's dirt.
Jinx knows there has been, for years, malicious speculation in the neighborhood regarding the relationship between Minnie and her white employer, even scurrilous talk of Ceci being O'Shaugh nessy's child and not Woodrow Fairchild Senior's the girl has a smooth, light, buttery colored skin but beyond that he doesn't know and doesn't want to know.
The very thought of it fills him with a choking, voiceless rage. Like Bea mooning over some lemony skinned bastard who treated her like shit.
Or Dorothy Dandridge in the movies all the silly Negro girls would die to look like. If there's white blood in him, he thinks, it's a long way back and many times diluted.
When Jinx comes back into the kitchen Minnie is frying fish at the stove in her heavy iron skillet and singing huskily under her breath.
It's a Johnny Mathis tune. or is it Frank Sinatra?
Jinx folds his fingers up behind his back and stands staring at the headless gutted bass in the skillet aswim in butter and chopped onions.
Hears his cracked voice say, This body they found? Last week? In the river? and Minnie says ohhandedly, not missing a beat in her singing, Going to say who did it, huh, mister Man About Town? cutting her eyes at him as if they're sharing a joke. Jinx stares and blinks. He knows his eyes are bloodshot and there's the reflection of a dead man's face in them. blurred as it sinks into water. Minnie says briskly, Make yourself useful, boy, don't just stand there in my way set the table, so Jinx sets the table, watches his quick deft hands set the table; then Minnie says, See where your sister's at, so Jinx locates Ceci playing with friends out on the porch; then Minnie says, Pour yourself and her two glasses of milk, so Jinx pours himself and Ceci two glasses of milk; then Minnie says, About time to call your father, and Jinx's head is ringing, his fingers and toes have gone icy cold as if every eye in a vast, vast gymnasium is upon him, so he says, quick, Got some thing on my mind, Momma, and Minnie shoots back as quick, Some girl?
Girl trouble? That it? You tell me you been messing around with cheap little pigs and sluts like your brother and I'll warm your precious ass! suddenly incensed, indignant, as if this is indeed what Jinx has told her, not waiting for his re ply. Any of them girls would die to catch a boy like you, good clean decent minded boy like Verlyn Fairchild, a star athlete, damn good student, going to college and all, going to be a teacher or a doctor or a lawyer, and living in this house, not some shameful falling down tarpaper shanty out by the dump!
Jinx tries not to become confused. He says, Momma, listen.
this thing that happened last week, this body they found Minnie, seeing the look in her son's face, slams a pot of boiled potatoes down on a counter and snorts, disgusted. Taking it all so serious! So grave!
Everybody talking about it, even doctor O'Shaugh nessy's patients, like it wasn't some worthless peckerhead hillbilly.
Garlock, for the Lord's sweet sake! And if it'd been a Negro boy, huh?
What then? Don' tell me, what then.
So suddenly is Minnie furious, her pug face tightened like a fist, Jinx stands silenced, a little dazed. His head is ringing worse than ever.
But he says, Momma, before Pa and Ceci come in, can I talk to you? I guess I made a mistake and I I don't know what to Minnie is fuming.
Garlock! Everybody knows what Garlock means in this town! Just trash!
Dirt! Lowest of the low! It's enough to make you sick to your stomach, all the fuss in the newspaper, the police asking questions!
Hadn't better ask me any questions, I'd tell em some answers! Those hillbilly trash beatin' and killin' their own wives and children.
worst kind of white folks exceptin' actual Nazis. And if it'd been a Negro boy instead, nobody'd give a good goddamn!
And Jinx, seeing the glisten in his mother's eyes, feeling the fear that's radiating from her, gives up.
Thinking, afterward, What was I going to ask her, anyway?
Whether I should turn myself in to the police. or not? Set myself up for the electric chair. or not?
These days, Jinx Fairchild is forced to re call how proud he'd been of his new name: not Verlyn any longer but Jinx. The name was given him by one of his mother's brothers when he was four years old: Here's the boy gon' cause you trouble, Minnie! He a re al devil a jinx. The joke of it being, partly, that the child was quiet, sober, watchful, the shyest of the pack of children at the family gathering in Pittsburgh; showing no sign of growing tall as a weed as he would some years later, but skinny, and quick clumsy, as if his lightning re flexes took him a split second or so ahead of where he wanted to be.
Every meal, he was the one to spill something at the table; he was the only child to track dirt on a carpet; if the gang of children was fooling around, and his aunt's new lamp, won at Bingo, crashed over, it was Verlyn who was probably responsible while being at the same time clearly innocent,thears of regret pain, and humiliation brimming in his eyes.
Ain't he something'! That boy. Little devil! Little Jinx.
Womens, keep dear! the adults hovering over him, laughing, stooping to hug, to kiss, Minnie herself in high spirits, too riled up by her loud laughing brothers to scold, or object, though she disliked the name intensely and would never use it. A nigger name, Minnie sniffs.
Some deadbeat boxer or racehorse. Just plain common.
Minnie re fuses to call Sugar Baby Sugar Baby either his rightful name is Woodrow Fairchild, Jr. though the name Sugar Baby seems to have been with him always, from the crib on up.
With the nightmare concentration of a man reading of his own fate, but reading of it in code, Jinx Fairchild studies re ports of the Garlock case in the Chronicle, listens to every news broadcast from WHMM he can without arousing suspicion, but never, never, does he make any inquiries about the murder, nor does he, if he can discreetly avoid it, participate in conversations at school or else where in which the mystery killing is the subject.
He knows that police are combing the area for witnesses.
Is he a witness?
Is Graice Courtney?
When he thinks of Graice Courtney his mind blanks out. like staring into the sun.
The first time the police come into Chaney's Variety to ask questions it's a Friday morning, and Jinx Fairchild isn't there; the second time it's Saturday afternoon and Jinx is there, but so is Chaney. a wheezy voiced black man whom the police officers appear to know and to like.
They speak with Jinx perhaps three minutes, asking does he know anything about the murder, did he know the murdered boy, has he heard any street talk, that sort of thing, and there's Jinx Fairchild, this good looking soft spoken Negro boy with the lanky colt legged grace of a natural athlete and an air of racial deference that doesn't seem feigned but bred deep in the bone, answering politely No, sir, and No, sir, I guess not, and Afraid not. Smooth as honey, Jinx Fairchild is swallowed down by the white police, who only think to ask on their way out who was in the store the night of the killing, and when Jinx says he was they say, But you didn't see or hear of anything, huh? and Jinx says again, No, sir, guess not.
He's folded and twined his fingers together inside his belt, to keep them from trembling. If there is danger of their trembling.
The street talk Jinx does hear, in and out of Chaney's and at the high school, is that a gang of Hell's Angels did the killing. White men.
As Chaney says, his face screwed up in disgust, Them leather jacket assholes on their motorcycles. Jinx blinks and stares and smiles vague as a simpleton. Hell's Angels? White men? Like whirlpools of air bringing up dust, countless whirlpools that com bine to a single spiral, rumors of Hell's Angels, motorcyclists, white men combine to a virtual certainty as day follows day.