He Was Her Man (21 page)

“That’s what it means, foot-washing? Y’all wash each other’s feet to show your humility?”

“Every Sunday,” said Ruby slapping her hard on the butt. “Now turn over.”

If Ruby was an example of humility, Sam wasn’t sure she had a handle on the concept. She was about to ask Ruby to describe a service when, from over the top of the cubicle, she heard June talking to someone. “Now, Lateesha, that’s Fontaine’s business. You want to know about that old car, you go talk to Fontaine.”

“That
old car
I left with Fontaine is a vintage Ford Sunliner that’s worth twenty thousand dollars. That’s what Early said.”

Sam sat straight up on the massage table, her towel falling to the floor. Forget foot-washing. Forget modesty. That young voice had said the magic words.

June said, “Whoa, child! Twenty thousand dollars?”

“And, furthermore, that’s for real. I know because I got on the phone this morning and called a dealer over in Little Rock, and he said that was about right, if the car was in its original shape.”

“How’d you know to do that?”

“I looked in the ads in
Car and Driver
till I found one in Arkansas. Listen, June, we’re wasting time. The man said the car ought not to be repainted, and that’s what Fontaine’s taken it to do, and I want you to call him and stop him. You do that for me, and you help me sell it, I’ll give you a piece of the deal.”

“Well,” said June, “Lateesha, that sounds mighty good, except there’s complications.”

“If you’re talking about Early, I’ll take care of Early.”

Sam thought Lateesha sounded awfully sure of herself to be so young. Having grabbed a robe, Sam was perched now on an empty table out in the big wrap room, soaking up their every word.

June said, “Well, I’m not exactly talking about Early, though I’d say we need to give some thought to him. The man’s not going to be happy about you snatching this deal away from him.”

“It’s
not his deal, it’s mine because I’m the one who found the car in the first place, and I say finders keepers.”

“I’d say losers weepers,” Sam spoke up, “if you’re talking about the Sunliner that belongs to Olive Adair out at the Gas ’N Grub.”

23

“MAN, YOU LOOK like something the cats drug in,” said Tate to Early Trulove, who was working on his third beer. Tate, the owner and barkeep of this saloon, which was also home to the best burgers in Hot Springs, had played in a sandbox with Early before Early’s mom, Valeen, had carted him off to Daytona Beach. Thus, Tate’s entitlement to personal commentary.

Early looked up at his tall friend with the shiny bald head, reminded him of an eight ball. “Don’t it just frost you when you get blamed for something that ain’t your fault?”

“Thelma does that to me all the time. But then, what you gonna do?” Tate opened his palms to the heavens.

“I’m not talking about any woman.” Early shoved his empty bottle toward Tate. “I’m talking about
the
man.”

“Oh, well, then.”

Early heard what Tate was really saying: What do you expect?

“Justice, I expect justice,” Early was saying, the little gold star twinkling in his mouth. Then a little slip of a white girl—lots of long dark hair, not much over five feet, didn’t weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet, but with good strong hands—stepped up to the bar with a round tray and said, “Ordering two Buds and a margarita, salt and rocks, please, Tate.”

“She’d make a good jockey,” Early said to Tate after he’d filled the order and she’d walked away.

Tate leaned over the bar. “You think you’ve got the red ass now, try messing with Cynthia, you’ll find out what trouble is.” Then he jerked his head down toward the end of the bar where two white men in uniform sat. Tate’s was across the street from police headquarters and was a hangout for the boys in blue as well as other locals. Tourists rarely wandered in, though it was only a block off the main drag. Tate barely moved his lips as he added, “Cynthia’s Archie Blackshears’s kid. The fat one on the right’s him.” The one with the pig face and the straight black bangs down in his face. Add a mustache, and that’s what Hitler would have looked like, if he’d been a fat redneck.

Early started, “Ain’t he the one who—?” He didn’t even get out the question before Tate gave him that squinty look that meant, Shut your mouth.

Early did. But that didn’t mean he was happy about it. Early wasn’t in the mood, not that he was ever in the mood to watch what he said in front of a white man. Or to a white man. Like only a little while ago, Jack Graham had started in yelling at him, saying he’d fingered the wrong woman, that wasn’t Mickey Steele he’d been sitting with at the piano bar. Early said, I already
told
you the Steele woman was a redhead. When I nodded, that meant, Yeah,
this
redhead. Not any stray woman with some other hair color who happened to be sitting within six miles of my nodding head.

He’s said that much back to Jack. But then Jack kept going on about it, and if Jack’d been black, Early would have said, You stupid s.o.b., you don’t listen half the time. But he couldn’t say that. Even as much as he and Jack got along, and Jack gave him respect, he couldn’t say that.

Or at least he didn’t think he could.

But maybe he ought to, once, test it. See what happened.

Though would that be about black and white, or about Jack being boss? See? It wasn’t that simple.

Tate had dropped a quarter in the jukebox, and James Brown was hollering at the top of his lungs about feeling good. Tate leaned over and said to Early, real quiet. “Yeah, Archie’s the one used to beat Cynthia up till her boyfriend knocked out his lights. She moved out of his house, started working here, saving up to go away to college. Archie, he hangs around here to see her, but she ain’t spoken a word to him since that night her boyfriend beaned him—two years ago.” Then all of a sudden, Tate gave Early the old nod and wink. Something worth checking out had just checked in.

Early stared in the back bar mirror until into it strolled the reflection of a tarted-up white hooker type, the likes of which he hadn’t seen since New Orleans and Bourbon Street. White-blond hair, scarlet lips, even a beauty mark.

“Can I help you, miss?” asked Tate.

“Oh, no,” she said, tucking herself into one of the booths that ran along the wall opposite the bar. She tugged at her short black skirt. “I’ll just make myself comfortable right here. Is there waitress service? I’d like to see a menu.”

There was something peculiar about this woman, thought Early, still looking in the mirror. In addition to the fact that she was dressed like that—the little white jacket with the big shoulders, the tiny skirt, the fishnet stockings, the high heels, the long red gloves—in middle of a Sunday afternoon. His ma, Valeen, had told him stories about how a long time ago, a madam in town named Maxine used to drive her dolled-up ladies up and down Central in an open convertible. Advertising the wares. But that had been back when the town was something. This was Southern small-town Sunday afternoon, all the white folks lying down taking a little snooze after the exertion of one helping of Baptist fire-and-brimstone, two of fried chicken and potato salad.

“Hi!” Cynthia the waitress was saying to the floozie. “Can I get you something?”

Early turned from the mirror to look directly at the two women: the tarted-up bimbo in the booth and the pretty young waitress in the black T-shirt and black jeans standing with one hand on her hip, the other resting on the wooden tabletop carved with the intertwined initials of folks who had long ago swapped spit, probably couldn’t remember one another’s names today. Early wanted to hear the bimbo speak again.

“Hey, boy, what you looking at?” That was Archie Blackshears.

Uh-oh, Tate grunted.

Early whipped his head to the right. Was that cracker cop talking to
him
?

“Yeah, you. What you think you looking at?”

“Now, Archie—” started the cop who was with him.

Archie shrugged the man off. “I said, what you think you looking at, boy? I know who you are, don’t think I don’t. You think just ’cause you’s away from here for years, you come back, all dressed up in your fancy clothes, that changes things? Think that means you ain’t still a nigger?”

Early was halfway down the bar, waving his beer bottle over his head before Archie’s words had stopped reverberating. Before his brain had connected with what might come next. Before Archie’s daughter had shut her mouth after speaking to Archie for the first time in two years, yelling, “You get the hell out of here!” But not before the hooker had flown from the booth to the end of the bar and leaned herself up against Archie Blackshears. She was around to the side of him, caressing his fat neck with a red-gloved hand.

“Honey,” she was saying, “you don’t need to get yourself all riled up. Besides, you want Bobbie Sue to sit with you, you can’t be ugly. Bobbie Sue don’t like ugly.”

“I don’t give a shit what Bobbie Sue likes.” Archie was all red in the face.

“Now, sure you do, sugar.” Bobbie Sue nibbled on his fat earlobe, in case he needed a hint.

All of which gave Tate time to jump over the bar and get a headlock on Early, whom he dragged into a side room. He slammed the door behind them.

*

When Tate looked out again, the cops were both gone, Bobbie Sue was drinking a beer at the bar with her legs crossed, showing plenty of muscular thigh, and Cynthia was standing next to her saying, “I am truly not believing this!”

“Come on out, Early,” Tate called behind him. “The Klan’s done packed up and gone home.”

“Do you know who this is?” Cynthia said to Tate with her hands on her hips. Early was standing behind him, checking forward and aft, ready to tear limb from limb anyone who looked at him sideways.

“Now, Cynthia, honey,” said Bobbie Sue, “you just watch your mouth. You never know who might be listening.” She mimed Early, craning her neck to check out the joint.

“Oh, Jesus,” said Cynthia, “there’s only those three goobers in the back room, and they’re so shit-faced they don’t give a rip if you’re a transvestite or a Transylvanian.”

“Well, that’s okay, darlin’,” Bobbie Sue said, her voice dropping an octave when she hit the endearment. “I’d
be
a Transylvanian if I thought it’d make you talk to me again.”

Tate said, “Good God have mercy, it’s Bobby Adair! Idn’t it?” Then Tate leaned right over in the blonde’s face. “Bobby, idn’t that you in there “

“Who’s Bobby Adair?” asked Early, feeling all-of-a-sudden wrung out, his adrenaline crashing head-on into confusion like a train wreck at an unmarked crossing. Was Tate saying the bimbo was a transvestite, is that what it was?

Then Cynthia began to laugh. She had a mighty big laugh on her for such a little girl. She was absolutely hee-hawing, leaning back against Bobby or Bobbie Sue, whichever it was, tears running down her pretty face. Then Tate started in, and then Bobbie/Bobby said, in a normal young-man voice, “Oh, God, I’d have given the world to have laid a big wet one on Archie full on the lips, got him to put a little tongue in it, then ripped off my wig, said, Arch, you French pretty good. I would have, too, but I was afraid he’d ID me, I got right in his face. He liked that ear nibbling, though. He did.”

Early had to ask, “What’s with the costume, Bobby?” He stuck out his hand. “And who the heck are you, anyway?” They introduced themselves.

Tate wanted to tell the story of the young lovers, Bobby and Cynthia, and Bobby coming to Cynthia’s defense, knocking Archie in the head with his own shooting trophy when Archie was beating up on her, but first, Tate insisted, they had to have a round on him.

“Bobby did all that for you, and you haven’t spoken to him since?” Early said to Cynthia when Tate had finished. “Girl, you’re cold.”

Cynthia put her chin up in the air. “I hate violence. I never did think violence solved a thing, so I decided never to speak to either one of them again.”

“You’re saying you’d rather that son of a bitch, excuse me, I know he’s your daddy, but you’d rather he beat you to a bloody pulp, killed you maybe, then my man here”—and Early grabbed Bobby around his shoulders, which is what was filling out that little white jacket, not shoulder pads—“would come to your rescue with that shooting trophy and save your life.”

“Well, now wait a minute,” said Bobby, scooting around on his stool, adjusting himself in the fishnet pantyhose that were binding something terrible. “Actually, having had some time to give the matter serious contemplation,
and
having become a member of the Graciousness Society of Elberton, Georgia, the goal of which is to reinstill politeness in our rush rush rush workaday world, I’d say I could have handled that situation better, without the shooting trophy.”

Cynthia’s smile said, So there.

Bobby continued, “Now, Early, you noticed how, just then, when you were about to bash Archie’s head in—an impulse I fully respect and can certainly identify with—I used my wiles instead of resorting to violence again. Violence simply begets violence, in my opinion.”

“Oh, Bobby!” said Cynthia, throwing her arms around him.

“Shit,” said Early. “That was easy, using your wiles, you dressed up like a girl, and besides, it wasn’t you he was calling nigger.”

“That’s true,” said Bobby, wiping the beer off his mouth with the back of his glove, smearing his lipstick. “That is true. Wiles wouldn’t be so easy if I were in my jeans. Or if I were you. I guess I need to think about that a bit.”

“And should we assume,” said Tate, “that you’re wearing that getup in the first place because you were afraid you might run into Archie when you came looking for Cynthia?”

“Correct,” said Bobby. “And, of course, I wasn’t sure how Cynthia might react, if I just walked up to her with my naked face. Not to mention, I can’t let
any
law enforcement catch me within fifty miles of Hot Springs. Terms of my parole.”