Blues for Mister Charlie (4 page)

MOTHER HENRY
: Richard, what are you doing with that gun?

RICHARD
: I’m carrying it around with me, that’s what I’m doing with it. This gun goes everywhere I go.

MOTHER HENRY
: How long have you had it?

RICHARD
: I’ve had it a long, long time.

MOTHER HENRY
: Richard—you never—?

RICHARD
: No. Not yet. But I will when I have to. I’ll sure as hell take one of the bastards with me.

MOTHER HENRY
: Hand me that gun. Please.

RICHARD
: I can’t. This is all that the man understands. He don’t understand nothing else.
Nothing else!

MOTHER HENRY
: Richard—your father—think of your father—

RICHARD
: Don’t tell him! You hear me?
(A pause)
Don’t tell him!

MOTHER HENRY
: Richard. Please.

RICHARD
: Take the tray away, old lady. I ain’t hungry no more.

JUANITA
(Off)
: Meridian? Mother Henry? Anybody home in this house?
(Enters)
Oh! Excuse me.

RICHARD
: I think they might be over at the church. I reckon Grandmama went over there to pray for my soul.

JUANITA
: Grandmama?

RICHARD
: Who are you? Don’t I know you?

JUANITA
: Yes. I think you might.

RICHARD
: Is your name Juanita?

JUANITA
: If your name is Richard.

RICHARD
: I’ll be damned.

JUANITA
: Ain’t you a mess? So you finally decided to come back here—come here, let me hug you! Why, you ain’t hardly changed at all—you just a little taller but you sure didn’t gain much weight.

RICHARD
: And I bet you the same old tomboy. You sure got the same loud voice—used to be able to hear you clear across this town.

JUANITA
: Well, it’s a mighty small town, Richard, that’s what you always said—and the reason my voice got so loud so early, was that I started screaming for help right quick.

RICHARD
: How do you do, man? Where you from?

PETE
: I’m from a little place just outside Mobile.

RICHARD
: Why didn’t you go North, man? If you was going to make a
move. That’s
the place. You get lost up there and I guarantee you some swinging little chick is sure to find you.

JUANITA
: We’ll let that pass. Are you together? Are you ready to meet the day?

RICHARD
: I am
always
together, little sister. Tell me what you got on your mind.

PETE
: We thought we’d just walk around town a little and maybe stop and have a couple of drinks somewhere. Or we can drive. I got a car.

RICHARD
: I didn’t think I’d never see you no more, Juanita. You been here all this time?

JUANITA
: I sure have, sugar. Just waiting for you to come home.

RICHARD
: Don’t let this chick upset you, Pete. All we ever did was climb trees together.

PETE
: She’s had me climbing a few trees, too. But we weren’t doing it together.

JUANITA
: How you making it, Papa D.? We brought someone to see you—you recognize him?

PAPA D.
: It seems to me I know your face, young man. Yes, I’m
sure
I know your face. Now, wait a minute, don’t tell me—you ain’t Shirelee Anderson’s boy, are you?

RICHARD
: No. I remember Shirelee Anderson, but we ain’t no kin.

PETE
: Try again, Papa D.

PAPA D.
: You your father’s boy. I just recognized that smile—you Reverend Henry’s son. Well, how you doing? It’s nice to have you back with us. You going to stay awhile?

RICHARD
: Yes sir. I think I’ll be around for awhile.

PAPA D.
: Yeah, I remember you little old string bean of a boy, full of the devil. How long you been gone from here?

RICHARD
: Almost eight years now. I left in September—it’ll be eight years next month.

PAPA D.
: Yeah—how’s your Daddy? And your Grandmother? I ain’t seen them for awhile.

PETE
: Ain’t you been going to church, Papa D.?

PAPA D.
: Well, you know how it is. I try, God
knows
I try!

RICHARD
: They fine, Papa D.

PAPA D.
: You all don’t want nothing to eat?

RICHARD
: We’ll think about it.

PETE
: Old Papa D. got something on everybody, don’t he?

JUANITA
: You better believe it.

RICHARD
: He’s kind of a Tom, ain’t he?

PETE
: Yeah. He
talks
about Mister Charlie, and he
says
he’s with us—us kids—but he ain’t going to do nothing to offend him. You know, he’s still trading with Lyle Britten.

RICHARD
: Who’s Lyle Britten?

PETE
: Peckerwood, owns a store nearby. And, man, you ain’t
seen
a peckerwood until you’ve seen Lyle Britten. Niggers been trading in his store for years, man, I wouldn’t be surprised but if the cat was rich—but that man still expects you to step off the sidewalk when he comes along. So we been getting people to stop buying there.

JUANITA
: He shot a colored man a few years back, shot him dead, and wasn’t nothing never said, much less done, about it.

PETE
: Lyle had been carrying on with this man’s wife, dig, and, naturally, Old Bill—his name was Bill Walker, everybody called him Old Bill—wanted to put a stop to it.

JUANITA
: She was a pretty little thing—real little and real black.

RICHARD
: She still around here?

PETE
: No. She disappeared. She went North somewhere.

RICHARD
: Jive mothers. They can rape and kill our women and we can’t do nothing. But if we touch one of their dried-up, pale-assed women, we get our nuts cut off. You remember that chick I was telling you about earlier, lives in Greenwich Village in New York?

PETE
: What about her?

RICHARD
: She’s
white
, man. I got a whole
gang
of white chicks in New York. That’s
right
And they can’t get enough of what little Richard’s got—and I give it to them, too, baby, believe me. You say black people ain’t got no dignity? Man, you
ought to watch a white woman when she wants you to give her a little bit. They will do anything, baby
anything
! Wait—I got some pictures. That’s the one lives in the Village.
Ain’t
she fine? I’d hate to tell you where I’ve had that long yellow hair. And, dig this one, this is Sandy, her old man works on Wall Street—

PETE
: We’re making Juanita nervous.

JUANITA
: Don’t worry about
me.
I’ve been a big girl for a
long
time. Besides, I’m studying abnormal psychology. So please feel free. Which one is this? What does
her
father do?

RICHARD
: That’s Sylvia. I don’t know what her father does. She’s a model. She’s loaded with loot.

PETE
: You take money from her?

RICHARD
: I take their money and they love it. Anyway, they ain’t got nothing else to do with it. Every one of them’s got some piss-assed, faggoty white boy on a string somewhere. They go home and marry him, dig, when they can’t make it with me no more—but when they want some
loving
, funky, down-home, bring-it-on-here-and-put-it-on-the-table style—

JUANITA
: They sound very sad. It must be very sad for you, too.

RICHARD
: Well, I want
them
to be sad, baby, I want to screw up
their
minds
forever.
But why should
I
be so sad? Hell, I was swinging, I just about had it made. I had me some fine chicks and a fine pad and my car, and, hell, I was on my way! But then—then I screwed up.

JUANITA
: We heard you were sick.

RICHARD
: Who told you I was sick?

JUANITA
: Your father. Your grandmother. They didn’t say what the sickness was.

RICHARD
: Hey, Papa D., come on over here. I want to show you something.

PAPA D
.: Where’d you steal those pictures, boy?

RICHARD
(Laughs): Steal
them! Man, I ain’t got to steal girls’ pictures. I’m telling you the truth!

PAPA D
.: Put them pictures away. I thought you had good sense.

RICHARD
: Ain’t that a bitch. He’s scared because I’m carrying around pictures of white girls. That’s the trouble with niggers. They all scared of the man.

JUANITA
: Well, I’m
not
scared of the man. But there’s just no point in running around, asking—

PETE
: —to be lynched.

RICHARD
: Well, okay, I’ll put my pictures away, then. I sure don’t want to upset nobody.

PETE
: Excuse me. I’ll be back.

RICHARD
: You want to dance?

JUANITA
: No. Not now.

RICHARD
: You want something to eat?

JUANITA
: No. Richard?

RICHARD
: Yeah?

JUANITA
: Were you
very
sick?

RICHARD
: What d’you want to know for?

JUANITA
: Like that. Because I used to be your girl friend.

RICHARD
: You was more like a boy than a girl, though. I couldn’t go nowhere without you. You were determined to get your neck broken.

JUANITA
: Well, I’ve changed. I’m now much more like a girl than I am like a boy.

RICHARD
: You didn’t turn out too bad, considering what you had to start with.

JUANITA
: Thank you. I guess.

RICHARD
: How come you ain’t married by now? Pete, now, he seems real fond of you.

JUANITA
: He
is
fond of me, we’re friends. But I’m not in any hurry to get married—not now. And not here. I’m not sure I’m going to stay here. I’ve been working very hard, but next year I think I’ll leave.

RICHARD
: Where would you go?

JUANITA
: I don’t know. I had always intended to go North to law school and then come back down here to practice law—God knows this town could stand it. But, now, I don’t know.

RICHARD
: It’s rough, huh?

JUANITA
: It’s not that so much. It
is
rough—are you all right? Do you want to go?

RICHARD
: No, no. I’m all right. Go on.
(A pause)
I’m all
right.
Go
on.

JUANITA
: It’s rough because you can’t help being scared. I don’t want to die—what was the matter with you, Richard, what were you sick with?

RICHARD
: It wasn’t serious. And I’m better now.

JUANITA
: Well, no, that’s just it. You’re not really better.

RICHARD
: How do you mean?

JUANITA
: I watch you—

RICHARD
:
Why
do you watch me?

JUANITA
: I care about you.

RICHARD
: You care about me! I thought you could hold your liquor better than that, girl.

JUANITA
: It’s not liquor. Don’t you believe that anyone can care about you?

RICHARD
: Care about me! Do you know how many times chicks have told me that? That they
cared
about me?

JUANITA
: Well. This isn’t one of those times.

RICHARD
: I was a junkie.

JUANITA
: A what?

RICHARD
: A junkie, a dope addict, a hop-head, a mainliner—a dope fiend! My arms and my legs, too, are full of holes!

JUANITA
: I asked you tell
me
, not the world.

RICHARD
: Where’d Pete go?

JUANITA
: He’s dancing.

RICHARD
: You want to dance?

JUANITA
: In a minute.

RICHARD
: I got hooked about five years ago. See, I couldn’t stand these chicks I was making it with, and I was working real hard at my music, and, man, I was lonely. You come off a gig, you be tired, and you’d already taken as much shit as you could stand from the managers and the people in the room you were working and you’d be off to make some down scene with some pasty white-faced bitch. And so you’d make the scene and somehow you’d wake up in the morning and the chick would be beside you, alive and well, and dying to make the scene again and somehow you’d managed not to strangle her, you hadn’t beaten her to death. Like you wanted to. And you get out of there and you carry this pain around inside all day and all night long. No way to beat it—no
way.
No matter how you turned, no matter what you did—no
way.
But when I started getting high, I was cool, and it didn’t bother me. And I wasn’t lonely then, it was all right. And the chicks—I could handle them, they couldn’t reach me. And I didn’t know I was hooked—until I was
hooked.
Then I started getting into trouble and I lost a lot of gigs and I had to sell my car and I lost my pad and most of the chicks, they split, naturally—but not all of them—and then I got busted and I made that trip down to Lexington and—here I am. Way
down
upon the Swanee River. But I’m going to be all right. You can bet on it.

JUANITA
: I’d like to do better than that. I’d like to see to it.

RICHARD
: How?

JUANITA
: Well, like I used to. I won’t let you go anywhere without me.

RICHARD
: You
still
determined to break your neck.

JUANITA
: Well, it’s a neck-breaking time. I wouldn’t like to appear to be above the battle.

RICHARD
: Do you have any idea of what you might be letting yourself in for?

JUANITA
: No. But you said you were lonely. And I’m lonely, too.