Lost Man's River (50 page)

“The speaker advertised—and paid—by the Society is Professor Collins. And the newspaper is covering Professor Collins's lecture as an update on the Watson story. Also, your historian's credentials will count heavily in our favor at next week's meeting with the Park Service.” Dyer was straining to be heard over the rollick of the meat carver, his irritation rising with his voice. “So why insist—Jesus! What is that damn racket!” Nostrils flared, he yanked his chair around. “What
is
that! You think he's drunk?” He glared. “He's poking fun at the damn customers!”

“He's
poking fun
!” Rob, who had been buttering a roll, parried and poked his knife toward the neighboring table. “Poke, poke,” he confided with a thrusting gesture, winking dirtily at the diners, who turned away. “Poke, poke,” he repeated. But already, his drunken grin was fading, replaced by that dangerous cast of eye which Lucius remembered all too well from the ugly episode in the Columbia County Courthouse. Before Lucius could stop him, Rob lurched to his feet and took off in the direction of the buffet. “Poking fun at paying customers stuffing their gullets?” he was calling. “No sir! Not in
this
man's restaurant, he don't! You men going to let that nigra get away with that? And still call yourselves men?”

By the time Lucius got there, the quick old man was well ahead of him in line. Grinning back at Lucius, he sang out to the other diners, “Oh Lordy Lordy, I surely do appreciate this kind of polite-type happy nigra, just overflowing with our grand ol' Southren hospitality!”

An old lady turned to offer a sweet smile—Ain't it the truth!—and Rob
smiled back at her. “Just so long,” he told her beamishly, “as his dang ol' nigger sweat don't go to falling in our food.”

“Now
that's
not nice!” When the woman hushed him, glancing fearfully at the carver, Rob leaned toward her, cupping his ear. “Eh?” he exclaimed. “
Nigger
, you say?” The woman was humiliated, furious. “He's drunk!” she told her husband, whose sun-scabbed vacation pate only hunkered lower down between his shoulders.

Rob launched forth in a homely cracker twang for increased emphasis and audibility, though not so loud that the black man, at the head of the long line, could make it out over his own boisterous patter. “Yes sirree, we'll set right down to a big plate of beef that'll half-kill us! And not only that but a heapin helpin of fine interracial fellowshipin on the side! We'll realize maybe for the first time in our whole lives how much we love these durn ol' Neg-ros, and why in the heck can't our durn kids see the Negro Problem the same way we do, and what a great country we have here in the good ol' U.S. and A., where black folks can talk to white folks just so nice and friendly you'd almost think they was real people after all!”

The candidates for the roast beef, who had manfully resisted Lucius's attempts to advance himself wrongfully in the line, realized at last that he was trying to reach Rob, and now made way for him only too gladly. He grasped the old man's bony shoulder, shook him hard. “That's enough,” he said. Ahead of them, the entire line looked stiff with shock. Even the carver had slowed his chanting and was looking around with the poised knife, sensing something disagreeable in the air.

“Irregardless of race, color, or creed!” Rob was struggling in Lucius's grip, exalted, and again the old lady turned to him, but before she could chastise this terrible old man about the evils of race prejudice, he checked her with a wink and a glad smile. “Don't y'all love pickaninnies, ma'am? So much
cuter
than them pasty ol' white babies, what do
you
think?” The woman moaned, utterly routed.

And then, quite suddenly, Rob self-deflated, turning in upon himself, soul-poisoned, muttering.

Watson Dyer barged past Lucius, intent upon the carver. Though wary now, the black man was still chanting. “All right, sir! How
you
doin this fine evenin? Care to try our beautiful roas' beef? All right? All
right
!” And the Major snapped, in a low hard voice accustomed to command, “Knock off this minstrel show, okay? Just carve that roast.”

The man stopped carving and stood absolutely still. In the silence, all over the room, people stopped eating, the tables wheeling in phalanxes of pale faces, the pink-and-white waitresses clustered in bouquets.

The carver maintained his broad smile. “
Well
, now! Ever'thing all right
wit' you, my friend? Y'all had you a nice day?” His eyes had tightened and his words conveyed a small hard irony, a note of warning. “What you might need is a cut of this fine beef!”

“Just carve,” the Major ordered calmly, with terrific anger, solid and efficient anger, smooth as polished stone.

The carver squinted at the point of his raised knife. “Yo, Nigger! You ain't heard de man? Cut dat minstrel shit right now! You jus' carve dat meat like you been told!” The carver honed his knife,
snick-snick, snick-snick
, appraising Dyer's age and weight, the patriotic windbreaker, the cerulean hard eyes.
Snick-snick, snick-snick
. “I been where you been, man,” the carver muttered, in sure and sudden insight. “Oh, I been
there
, okay!”

“This what you risked your neck for, boy, over in Asia? To come home and play the fool for these old farts?”

“Oh my goodness!” The old fart behind the Major dropped a radish as her elderly husband harrumphed in scared protest. The line, milling and wheeling, clutched its plates. “For Christ's sake, Dyer!” Lucius said, feeling old-fartish. The whole room hated them for spoiling their heartwarming fellowship with this delightful Negro personality, and their good supper, too. “Just carve, boy,” Dyer repeated softly. His smile was exhilarated and his tone pitying in the purity of his cruel and righteous anger.

The carver nodded. “Playin de fool, dass it.” The carver's voice was intent now, in Dyer's key. “Dass what you doin, Black Boy. Playin de fool, oh yes!” Motioning to the Major to come closer, he leaned forward with a great big grin to whisper his stentorian secret into Dyer's ear. These two had a secret, from long, hard seasons of war. “Hard to put yo' finger on de fool, now ain't dat right?” But the real secret was the carving knife, which he slid across the board on the flat of its handle. His pebbly voice grated, “Back off, mothafuck. Get outta my face.” And his grin twitched as the bright tip pinked the Major's belly through his shirt.

The astounded white man sprang back, jarring a table.

The meat carver stood straight again, sharpening his knife,
snick-snick, snick-snick
. He appeared to be quaking with mirth, as if this nice customer had just told him a great story. “Yassuh, tha's
right
!” he cried, flashing his blade, dumping too much bloody meat on Dyer's plate, then more, then more. “You had enough, my friend? Don't go spillin dat blood gravy, now!” He laughed oddly in warning. “See what I'm tellin you? Lookit what you done to dat nice shirt!”

Still poised on the knife were three or four more hacked and heavy slices, which the man still threatened to heap upon the plate. The room was still but for the timid scrape of a shifted chair. But now the carver seemed transfixed by what he saw in the face of Watson Dyer, who had lifted the plate high like
a pagan offering. The Major considered the red knife and its heaped meat, then raised his pale gaze to the bloodshot eyes in the carver's shining face. Patient, he watched as the black man licked his lower lip. His fury weakened and the reality of his doomed rebellion overtook him and his gaze slid sideways. In that instant the meat heaped on the knife was transmuted from bloody threat into damning evidence. The carver waited passively for what was coming.

When the Major saw that the man was defeated, he took the knife out of his hand and dumped its load and scraped most of the slices off his plate onto the cutting board.

The black veteran of Asian combat found his voice and whispered at the white one. “
Just
doin my job, is all it is. Jus' makin my feller Americans feel good, you know? The way they want it.”

Dyer handed back the knife and moved on past. Giving his plate to a waitress, he went to the hostess near the door. Soon a manager was summoned, and he hiked his bloodstained shirt to display his stomach. All looked at the carver as they spoke.

Observing this, the black man turned a furious gaze upon Rob Watson. He slapped some meat onto Rob's plate—“Had enough now? You sure bout dat?”—then pointed the dripping knife straight at his eyes.

Then he waved Rob past, confronting Lucius. “
Yes
, sir! Them gentlemens with you?”

Lucius nodded. “They are my brothers. My half brothers.”

He detained Lucius for a moment, pressing the knife blade down hard on his plate, pinning the heavy china to the butcher board. “The three brothers!” He shook his head. “Your turn now. Got anything smart you want to say to a man of color?”

Lucius flushed. “I want to say I'm extremely sorry.”

“Sorry!”
Wildly the carver slashed at the roast on the bloody board. “You sonsabitches has lost me my damn
job!
”

The Major brought his mood back to the table. Lucius was too roiled to speak, and only Dyer ate with any appetite. He stabbed at his roast beef, forked it away, as if oblivious of the small knife slit in his epidermis.

Their waitress wore a gold link chain on rhinestone glasses, but her ears stuck out through long and lank dark hair like a wild horse mane. With alarm she watched the Major slashing at his meat, the knife blade and fork tines grating angrily on the porcelain. “How
you
folks doin?” she ventured finally. “Everythin all right?”

“What does it look like?” Dyer snapped, not looking up. The woman fled.
Rob was intent on the carver. Beckoned from his post by emissaries from Management, the big man howled in the agony of his plight and stabbed his knife into the carving board, upright and shivering, as the food line yawed and fell away from him in fright. He stripped off his bloody apron, balled it up, and hurled it across the steam tables of vegetables onto the soups and dressings on the salad bar, then banged out of the room through the pantry doors.

Rob muttered, “I'm going to tell 'em it was all my fault.”

“Save your breath,” Dyer advised him. As a decorated veteran, the man had received preferential hiring, the Major had learned from Management, which soon became aware, however, that this war hero was very angry and unstable. In fact, they had expressed gratitude to Major Dyer for reporting the “assault” and providing cause for getting rid of him which could not be challenged by the veterans' organizations or the unions. Dyer had been offered free restaurant privileges for a five-year period, which would not, however, guarantee this place protection from a hefty lawsuit.

The Major forked another mouthful, chewed it up, processing his food while glancing through his papers. Officious, in a hurry now, he briefed them in a military manner. He had filed for an injunction against the burning of the house, pending a court decision on the validity of the Watson Claim. Two days hence, the judge would hold a public hearing on that claim in Homestead, without which no injunction could be granted. Once the injunction was in place, he was confident that it could be extended, several times if necessary, permitting them time to apply for permanent historical status for the house.

After attending the Professor's talk at Naples tomorrow evening, Dyer would go to Homestead for the hearing. If all went well, he would return to Everglade for a meeting with “the Watson family” and the Park attorneys. Time was short. The Park might attempt to burn the house before that injunction could be granted, which was why he had stationed a caretaker on the place, to make sure that no such “errors” would occur. What he needed at once was full power of attorney, in case his authority should be challenged and he could not reach them.

The form Dyer pushed at him to sign made Lucius feel rushed and uneasy. “This gives you authority to make all legal decisions—take any of these steps—without consulting the family?”

“Well, that's customary in these matters. You trust your attorney or you don't. And things are moving fast,” he added, “so authority to act swiftly might be critical.” Moving smoothly past Lucius's query, Dyer complained that he had received no response from Addison Burdett or from the sisters. Over the telephone, Mrs. Parker had told him that Addison was away,
and that their sister would never cooperate. He frowned at Lucius, whom he seemed to hold responsible for this truancy, then rapped the power-of-attorney form and proffered his pen.

“My signature has to be notarized, isn't that true?”

Dyer waved him on, impatient. “I'm a notary,” he said.

Something was wrong or missing here, but Lucius, rather tired and drunk, was still too unraveled by the cruel and senseless episode with the carver to think it through. To hell with it. Abruptly, he scrawled his signature.