Stories (2011) (50 page)

The car parked and a man on the passenger side got out. He
had a hat in his hand and he put it on. He wore a nice blue suit and fine black
shoes and he looked almost clean, the dust having only touched his outfit and
hat like glitter tossed at him by The Great Depression Fairy. He leaned left
and then leaned right, stretching himself. The other doors opened and three men
got out. They all wore suits. One of the men wearing a brown pinstripe suit and
two-tone shoes came over and put his foot on the back of the car and wiped at
his shoes with a handkerchief that he refolded and put in his inside coat
pocket. He said to the man in the blue suit, “You want I should get some
Co-colas or somethin’, Ralph?”

“Yeah, that’ll be all right. But don’t come back with all
manner of shit like you do. We ain’t havin’ a picnic. Get some drinks, a few
things to nibble on, and that’s it.”

As the man in the pinstripe suit went into the store, an old
man came out to the pump. He looked as if he had once been wadded and was now
starting to slowly unfold. His hair was as white as the sand and floated when
he walked. “I help you fellas?”

“Yeah,” said Ralph. “Filler up.”

The old man took the hose and removed the car’s gas cap and
started filling the tank. He looked at the car window, and then he looked away
and looked back at the store. He swallowed once, hard, like he had an apple
hung in his throat.

Ralph leaned against the car and took off his hat and ran
his hand through his oiled hair and put it back on. He stared at the old man a
long time. “Much hunting around here?” he asked the old man.

“Lot of hunting, but not much catching. Depression must be
gettin’ better though, only seen one man chasin’ a rabbit the other day.”

It was a tired joke, but Ralph grinned.

“This used to be a town,” the old man said. “Wasn’t never
nothing much, but it was a town. Now most of the folks done moved off and
what’s here is worn out and gritted over. Hell, you get up in the morning you
find sand in the crack of your ass.”

Ralph nodded. “Everything’s gritted over, and just about
everybody too. I think I’m gonna go to California.”

“Lots done have. But there ain’t no work out there.”

“My kind of work, I can find something.”

The old man hesitated, and when he asked the question, it
was like the words were sneaking out of the corner of his mouth: “What do you
do?”

“I work with banks.”

“Oh,” the old man said. “Well, banking didn’t do so good
either.”

“I work a special division.”

“I see . . . Well, it’s gonna be another bad night with lots
of wind and plenty of dust.”

“How can you tell?”

“’Cause it always is. And when it ain’t, I can tell before
it comes about. I can sniff it. I used to farm some before the winds came,
before the dust. Then I bought this and it ain’t no better than farming because
people ’round here are farmers and they ain’t got no money ’cause they ain’t
got no farms so I ain’t got no money. I don’t make hardly nothin’.”

“Nothin’, huh?”

“What you’re givin’ me for this here gas and the like,
that’s all I’ve made all day.”

“That does sound like a problem.”

“Tell me about it.”

“So if I was to rob you, I’d just be keepin’ my own money.”

“You would . . . You boys staying in town long?”

“Where’s to stay?”

“You got that right. Thirty, forty more feet, you’re out of
town. There ain’t nothing here and ain’t nobody got nothin’.”

“That right?”

“Nothing to be had.”

Ralph said, “My daddy, he had a store like this in Kansas.
He ain’t got nothin’ now. He got droughted out and blown out. He died last
spring. You remind me somethin’ of him.”

The other two men who had been loitering on the other side
of the car came around to join Ralph and the old man, and when Ralph said what
he said about his old man, one of the men, brown suited, glanced at Ralph, then
glanced away.

“Me, I’m just hanging in by the skin of my teeth, and I just
got a half dozen of ’em left.” The old man smiled at Ralph so he would know it
was true. “I’m just about done here.”

“You a Bible reader?” Ralph asked the old man.

“Everyday.”

“I figured that much. My old man was a Bible reader. He
could quote chapter and verse.”

“I can quote some chapters and some verses.”

“You done any preachin’?”

“No. I don’t preach.”

“My old man did. He ran a store and preached and had too
many children. I was the last of ’em.”

The old man looked at the tank. “You was bone dry, son, but
I about got you filled now.”

—————

In the store the man in the brown suit with pinstripes,
whose name was Emory, saw a little Negro boy sitting on a stool wearing a thick
cloth cap that looked as if it had been used to catch baseballs. The boy had a
little pocketknife and was whittlin’ on a stick without much energy.

Emory looked at the boy. The boy latched his eyes on Emory.

“What you lookin’ at, boy?”

“Nuthin’.”

“Nuthin’, sir.”

“Yes, suh.”

Emory wandered around the store and found some candies and
some canned peaches. He got some Co-colas out of the ice box and set them
dripping wet on the counter with the canned peaches and the candies.

Emory turned and looked at the boy. “You help out here,
nigger?”

“Just a little.”

“Well, why don’t you do just a little? Get over here behind
the counter and get me some of them long cigars there, and a couple packs of
smokes.”

“I don’t do that kind of thing,” the boy said. “That there
is Mr. Grady’s job. I just run errands and such. I ain’t supposed to go behind
the counter.”

“Yeah. I guess that make sense. And them errands. What’s a
nigger get for that kind of work?”

“A nickel sometimes.”

“Per errand?”

“Naw, suh. Per day.”

“That’s a little better. There’s white men workin’ in the
fields ain’t making a dollar a day.”

“Yes, suh. They’s colored men too.”

“Yeah. Well, how hard are they workin’?”

“They workin’ plenty hard.”

“Say they are,” Emory said, and took a hard look at the boy.
The boy’s eyes were still locked on his and the boy had his hands on his knees.
The boy’s face was kind of stiff like he was thinking hard on something but one
eye sagged slightly to the left and there was a scar above and below it. He had
one large foot and a very worn-looking oversized shoe about the size of a
cinder block.

“What happened to your eye?”

“I had a saw jump back on me. I was cuttin’ some wood and it
got stuck and I yanked and it come back on me. I can still see though.”

“I can tell that. What’s wrong with your foot?”

“It’s a club foot.”

“What club does it belong to?”

“What’s that?”

“You ain’t so smart, are you?”

“Smart enough, I reckon.”

“So, with that foot, you don’t really run errands, you walk
’em.”

The boy finally quit looking at Emory. “Ain’t that right,”
Emory said when the boy didn’t answer.

“I s’pose so,” the boy said. “That a gun you got under your
coat?”

“You a nosey little nigger, ain’t ya? Yeah, that’s a gun.
You know what I call it?”

The boy shook his head.

“My nigger shooter. You know what I shoot with it?”

The boy jumped up. It caused the stool to turn over. The boy
dropped the stick and the pocketknife and moved as fast as his foot would allow
toward the door, turned and went right along the side of the store, giving
Emory a glance at him through the dusty glass, and then there was just wall and
the boy was gone from view.

Emory laughed. “Bet that’s the fastest he ever run,” he said
aloud. “Bet that’s some kind of club-footed nigger record.”

—————

The old man was topping off the pump as the boy ran by and
around the edge of the building and out of sight. By the time the old man
called out “Joshua,” it was too late and from the way the boy was moving,
unlikely to stop anyway.

“What the hell has got into him?” the old man said.

“Ain’t no way to figure a colored boy,” Ralph said.

“He’s all right,” the old man said. “He’s a good boy.”

The other two men were standing next to the pump, and Ralph
looked at them. He said, “John, why don’t you and Billy go in there and see you
can help Emory?”

“He don’t need no help,” Billy said. He was a small man in
an oversized black suit and no hat and he had enough hair for himself and a
small dog, all of it greasy and nested on top of his head, the sides of his
skull shaved to the skin over the ears so that he gave the impression of some
large leafy vegetable ready to be pulled from the ground.

“Well,” Ralph said, “you go help him anyway.”

The old man was hanging up the gas nozzle. He said, “That’s
gonna be a dollar.”

“Damn,” Ralph said. “You run some of that out on the
ground?”

“Things gone up,” the old man said. “In this town, we got to
charge off of what the suppliers charge us. You know that, your daddy owned a
store.”

Ralph pondered that. He buttoned and unbuttoned his coat.
“Yeah, I know it. Just don’t like it. Hell, I’m gonna go in the store too. A
minute out of this sun ain’t gonna hurt me, that’s for sure.”

Ralph and the old man went into the store side by side until
they came to the door, and Ralph let the old man go in first.

The old man went behind the counter and Ralph said, “You
sure look a lot like my old man.”

“Don’t reckon I’m him, though,” the old man said, and showed
his scattered teeth again, but the smile waved a bit, like the lips might fall
off.

“No,” Ralph said. “You ain’t him, that’s for sure. He’s good
and dead.”

“Well, I’m almost dead,” the old man said. “Here until God
calls me.”

“He don’t call some,” Ralph said. “Some he yanks.”

The old man didn’t know what to say to that. Ralph noticed
that there were pops of sweat on the old man’s forehead.

“You look hot,” Ralph said.

“I ain’t so hot,” the old man said.

“You sweatin’ good,” Billy said.

“Ain’t nobody talkin’ to you,” Ralph said. “Go on over there
and sit on that stool and shut up.”

Billy didn’t pick up and sit on the stool, but he went quiet.

“I guess maybe I am a little hot,” the old man said,
straightening the items on the counter. “We got the gas, and we got these
goods. Canned peaches, some candies, and Co-colas. That’s be about a dollar
fifty for all that, and then the gas.”

“That dollar tank of gas,” Ralph said.

“Yes, sir. That’ll be two-fifty.”

“You got all manner of stuff, didn’t you, Emory?” Ralph
said. “I told you not to get all that stuff.”

“I got carried away,” Emory said, and turned to the old man.
“You give any stamps or any kind of shit like that with a purchase?”

The men had gathered together near the counter, except for
Billy, who was standing off to the side with hurt feelings and some of his hair
in his eyes.

The old man shook his head. “No. Nothing like that.”

“That don’t seem right,” Emory said. “Some stores do that.”

“Do they?” the old man said.

“Some give dishes,” Emory said.

“Shut up,” Ralph said. “You wouldn’t know what to do with a
dish you had it. You’d shit in a bowl and sling the plates. Just get things together
and let’s go.”

The old man was sacking up the groceries, but he left the
Co-colas on the counter. “You gonna carry those separate?” he asked.

“That’ll be all right,” Ralph said. “You even got hands like
my old man. That’s somethin’.”

“Yes, sir,” the old man said, “I s’pose it is.”

Ralph looked around and saw that the others were staring at
him. When he looked at them they looked away. Ralph turned back to the old man.

“You got a phone here?”

“No. No phone.”

Ralph nodded. “Total it. I’m goin’ on out to the car. Emory,
you or John take care of it.”

—————

Ralph walked around to the front of the car and got out his
cigarettes and pulled one loose of the pack with his lips, put the pack away
and lit up with a wooden kitchen match he struck on the bottom of his shoe. As
he smoked, he looked through the front window of the car. He walked around to
the side of the car and looked in. The tommy gun he had told Billy to put up
lay on the backseat in plain view.

He walked around to the other side of the car where the gas
pump was and looked in through the side window. You could see it real good from
that angle, about where the old man stood to put the gas in.

He walked back around to the front of the car and started to
lean against it but saw it was covered in dust, so didn’t. He just stood there
smoking and thinking.

After a bit, there was a sharp snapping sound from inside
the store. Ralph tossed the cigarette and went inside. Emory was putting away
his gun.

“What you done?” Ralph said, and he walked to the edge of
the counter and took a look. The old man lay on the floor. His eyes were open
and his head was turned toward Ralph. The old man had one arm propped on his
elbow, and his hand stuck up in the air and his fingers were spread like he was
waving hello. On his forehead was what looked like a cherry blossom and it grew
darker and the petals fell off and splashed down the old man’s face and dripped
on the floor in red explosions and then a pool of the same spread out at the
back of his head and coated the floor thick as spilled paint.

Ralph turned and looked at Emory. “Why’d you do that?”

“You told me to,” Emory said.

Ralph came out from behind the counter and hit Emory hard
enough with the flat of his hand to knock Emory’s hat off. “I meant pay the
man, not shoot him.” Emory put a hand to the side of his face.