Jinx wonders if she's a little crazy.
Jinx wonders what she wants with him, after the trouble she's already brought him.
These conversations, these breathless improvised meetings, are entirely at Graice Courtney's initiative. Left to himself, Jinx Fair child wouldn't touch her to use a frequent expression of Minnie's with a ten foot pole.
The previous summer, she'd telephoned him at home. Called three times, the first two times getting Minnie, since Jinx was out.
Who's that girl pestering you? Wouldn't leave her name, like she's ashamed? Did sound like some pissy little white girl to me! Jinx was astonished by the call and touched: near as he could determine, Graice was in tears because of some unhappiness in her family; she'd told him she didn't deserve to live because she was fated.
just no good. Jinx had talked with her for almost an hour, and when he hung up he'd felt as exhausted as if he'd been working out in the gym for that long.
Next day, and the days following, he'd been on the lookout for her.
meaning to avoid her.
She's rummaging now in her purse. Says she has something for him.
How come you always giving me things? Jinx laughs.
His laughter, with Graice Courtney, sounds to his own ears like wire scraping concrete.
Graice laughs too, as if happily. Must be, she says, with a sidelong smile, you're the kind of boy people like to give things to.
Several times in the past year or so Graice has embarrassed Jinx by pressing little gifts on him. He's accustomed to being given things by his mother, and relatives, and certain black girls, and neighbor ladies who think he's sweet. but there's an intensity in Graice's behavior that makes him uncomfortable. Is she thinking of him all the time?
Plotting things to give him, things with droll little meanings, all the time? Once she gave him a key chain with a thimble sized brass basketball. another time a rhinestone stickpin Jinx hadn't known what the damn thing was supposed to be another time a slim gold fountain pen, very elegant. Jinx wonders if he's supposed to re member her sometime, give her something.
He never has and never will.
Nor is he fool enough to touch her; he knows how that would end up.
Huh! What's this?
It's a sepia tinted photograph, very old, measuring about six inches by eight, on stiff cardboard backing. a photograph of the Civil War.
Stiffly posed across a rural bridge, reflections sharp in the water and sky, in the background massed with j unglelike foliage, are a band of Union soldiers, some on horseback, most on foot, and among the foot soldiers are several black men, uniformed like the rest. The caption, in faded ink, re ads Military bridge across the Chickahominy, 1864.
Jinx Fairchild whistles faintly. This the re al thing? I mean so old?
He's holding the photograph up to the light. The way he stares, it might be he's looking at something hurtful.
It always scares Jinx, stirs him to an emotion he can't name, when he sees the images of people long since dead, considers their strange composure in the face of destiny and dissolution. Contemplating the past, you know there's no Heaven, no place for all those dead to end up. Also, these are Union soldiers, freed slaves among them, in the Man's uniform: just as husky, just as manly, just as composed though their uniforms are all shabby as the whites. A photograph is a puzzle, Jinx Fairchild thinks, but what's it a puzzle of? And what's the solution? He's just staring and staring, like a small child.
Graice is saying excitedly, leaning against him, My uncle, he's a photographer, he has drawers of things like that, things he collects.
He goes all around the state, to auctions and junk shops, collecting.
I told him about you and I said. and he said, Please take it and give it to your friend. I told him you were my friend. I said.
I work for my uncle sometimes, if there's enough work to be done.
The thing about photography that's so surprising, it's that when a negative is being developed, a print made from a negative, there isn't any true light or color to it except what you make of it.
From a single negative you can get a thousand different prints. Not many people know that. Graice is chattering happily, leaning against Jinx's arm, but Jinx isn't paying much attention until she says, I thought, you know, when I found it. one of your actual ancestors might be there. On the bridge.
Jinx looks up sharply. One of my what?
'Ancestors.
Jinx Fairchild just stares at her. Ancestors?
She says, faltering, When Lincoln freed the slaves, I mean.
And they helped fight the.
Slaves?
Jinx Fairchild stares at the white girl until she looks away, chilled and re buffed.
He doesn't say another word to her until she gets off the bus at Jewett Street, then only mumbles, G'bye, and doesn't look after her, as if they were strangers who'd sat together by accident, sure won t peer back to see where she's standing on the sidewalk staring after him.
hurt and lost looking.
Pissy little white girl, he's thinking. Neck not worth wringing.
Jinx keeps the photograph, however. In fact he must treasure it; his mother will discover it in a mess of old yellowing news paper clippings and other high school memorabilia, after Jinx's death.
That faded, antique picture, dreamlike in its extraneous de tail, of long dead soldiers, horses. Stiffly yet resolutely poised on a bridge in some part of the world unknown to Jinx Fairchild. He never learns where the Chickahominy, creek or river, is. Guesses it must be the South.
Those men living, then. Like me. Alive and walking around in their skins then, like me.
Thinking me, me, me. like me.
Jinx Fairchild doesn't feel any kinship with the black soldiers in the photograph. He sees to his surprise that one or two of them look actually younger than he. just boys. But he doesn't feel any particular kinship. A black man in uniform troubles his soul, for you got to figure, in North America at least, it's the Man's uniform he's wearing; just one other way for the Man to exploit. use up suck dry discard. Jinx doesn't think of ancestors, and he sure doesn't think of freed slaves.
Slaves!
No connection between the long dead soldiers on the Chick ahominy bridge and Jinx Fairchild in Hammond, New York, aged eighteen. No connection between Jinx Fairchild and anybody, whatever the color of their goddamn skin.
Says Jinx aloud, thinking of these things, Fuckers!
Though he'd be hard put to say, exactly, what he means or why he's so trembling angry.
Says Sugar Baby Fairchild with an air of one put upon, Ain't nobody said anything about losing any fuckin' game, boy, you readin' me wrong his voice both whining and melodic, reproachful and brotherly warm you just don't play so cool, is all.
A game is won by two points like it's won by twenty. It's the point spread that's the thing, and Iceman surely got his off nights like anybody else. Shit, there's Ernie Banks hisself, he was a rookie with the Cubs. I bet you Babe Ruth, Stan Musial, all of em. Jinx Fairchild the coolest player these shitheads ever seen, so, comes this night, over at Troy, maybe your team's kind of nerved up, scared, maybe Iceman has got a nasty cough, don't have to do any asshole thing, boy, any actual mistake, you just ain't so cool is all.
And nobody's going' to know cause who can re ad minds?
Sugar Baby is shooting baskets with Jinx, cigarette in his mouth: if he sinks one, OK; if he misses doesn't give a shit, ain't nothing but a boys' game anyway.
Seeing his brother's face so stiff and his eyes hooded and hurt, Sugar Baby continues, laying a hand on Jinx's shoulder that Jinx shrugs off, I was watchin' you once, boy, you's just a kid, in the house; you knocked this glass or something' off the table with your elbow, then, right in midair, before it crash, you catch it.
Jesus, just reach around and catch it! Like it wasn't anything you thought about cause can't nobody think that fast, just something' you done, like a cat swats a moth. I'm fast too, and I got eyes around the side of my head too, but I ain't like that. that's weird. So what I'm sayin', boy, is you got re flexes you don't even think about, so any time you start thinkin' about them maybe you're going' to be slowed up some, which would make you the speed of any other asshole playin' past his capacity, and in the game, that night, seein' it's the semifinals and Troy ain't that bad and all Hammond's got is mainly you and that big clodhopper guard what's his name. so Iceman naturally going' to be thinkin' more than just some ordinary game, right?
Tryin' re al hard to win the championship for all them whiteys, right?
Fuck face Breuer jumpin' up and down like he's comin' in his pants, right?
Well, maybe, that night, performin' monkey just ain't so cool, is all.
It's natural. Ain't nobody going' to blame you, you do it smooth.
And you so smooth anyhow, boy, you can fuck up and look good at the same time. Say there's some asshole gets open, and you know, you pass him the ball, he prob'ly ain't going' to score, but you pass him the ball anyhow maybe bouncin' it sort of wrong and he loses it.
or you got a free throw and get coughin'. any kind of shit like that.
Like I say, two points can win a game like twenty. or whatever.
Long as you win. Ain't that so, baby?
It's a cool sunny wind whisked April morning, Jinx Fairchild bareheaded in soiled work pants and T shirt, Sugar Baby Fairchild a sight for the eyes in new maroon cord trousers with a wide leather brass buckled belt initials SBF in script , antelope hide jacket, two inch heeled square toed kidskin boots, four inch brimmed ve lour hat pushed to the side back of his head. meticulously trimmed sideburns, mustache. the whites of his eyes eerily white as he speaks, as if for emphasis. The quieter Jinx Fairchild is, the more Sugar Baby Fairchild talks. It's like singing, hs talk, like humming: the same words used again and again till they almost aren't words but just sounds, a comfort to them.
No secret in the neighborhood that Sugar Baby Fairchild is Poppa D. s newest young man; even Minnie Fairchild must know her boy has got some tight connection with Leo Lyman over in Buffalo. Leo Lyman who's so legendary a name among local blacks. And there's the 1956 Eldorado, gleaming pink and gold, chrome like bared grinning teeth, and all the accessories, and the fancy apartment on Genesee Street where he's living with this good looking high yalla woman who's an old friend too of PoppaD. s.
Seem like everybody, in a certain circle, is tight friends of everybody else.
These days, Sugar Baby Fairchild isn't welcome in the house on East Avenue; Minnie won't have him. Won't even accept money from him, or presents. The few times he has offered.
Sugar Baby Fairchild has told his family it's privileged work he does for Poppa D whole lot better than janitor work or shoveling gravel or cleaning up white folks' shit at the hospital or some hotel uptown or hauling away their garbage, which is what his friends from high school do, mostly. He doesn't see Jinx very often, runs into him on the street sometimes; this is the first time he has actually sought Jinx out, approaching him in the playground where Jinx is practicing baskets, and at first it isn't clear to Jinx what Sugar Baby wants, why he's so friendly, so interested in Jinx's plans for the future. this is the brother who hadn't troubled to attend one of Jinx Fairchild's games this year.
And in those clothes, tight pants and high heeled shoes, and smoking a cigarette, Sugar Baby surely isn't interested in fooling around with a basketball.
Now Jinx knows what it is, Jinx isn't saying anything. His legs stiff like a zombie or robot in a movie and he's missing half his shots.
and Sugar Baby's getting impatient, working up a little sweat. Shit, you actin' like some gal thinks her pussy's so special can't nobody touch it. What you care about them white mothas?
You think they care about you? You think they give a shit about you?
All you is, boy, is a performin' monkey for them, same as I was, and if you don't perform, you on your ass. and they turn their attention to the next monkey. You think they give a shit about you?
Truth is, asshole, they don't even know you. never heard of you.
He makes a contemptuous spitting gesture.
It happens like this: Sugar Baby's penny shiny face is screwed up like he's in pain, and with no warning Jinx rushes at him, and easy as the blink of an eye Sugar Baby sidesteps him raises his right knee so fast, so unerring, and so hard, into Jinx's testicles, the move so exquisitely timed, it's clear the move can t have been performed for the first time.
Could be, there is a God.
Could be, He's got punishment on His mind.
Kneeling, Jinx Fairchild prays Help me, God, help me to be good, his mind drifting off even as he prays thinking of pumping himself deep in one of his girls or in Graice Courtney or in that white cunt missis Dunphy who's always smiling at him. thinking of bringing that rock down on Little Red Garlock's head Help me, God, I'm waiting.