Red-Dirt Marijuana: And Other Tastes (5 page)

Sss-sst!
Big Nail’s razor made a hissing arc that touched C.K. just along the left breast, and part of his coat fell away.

“That’s right,” said C.K., “we jest havin’ a friendly conversation.”
Sss-sst!
“Big Nail tellin’ me how glad he is to be going back.”
Sss-sst!

“Lawd God!” said someone.

“You stop it now!” said Wesley.

Outside, a woman screamed and started wailing, and one or two children began to cry.

“Make ’em stop it, Mister Wesley!”

“Somebody call the police!”

Inside, they circled like cats, now in one direction, now in the other, feinting steps forward and to the side, suddenly lashing out with the five-inch blade, and all the time smiling and talking with a hideous gentility.

“You lookin’fit, C.K.”

Sss-sst!

“Well, thank you, Big Nail.”
Sss-sst!
“
I
was about to remark the same of you.”

“You got to stop it now!”
shouted Old Wesley. “We done call the police!”

“Somebody git a gun!”

But they weren’t listening any more. They were moving slower now, each one sagging a little, and they had stopped talking. Once they almost stopped moving altogether, standing about seven feet apart, their arms lower than before, and it seemed at that moment that they might both collapse.

“Reckon we might as well . . . do it up right,” said Big Nail.

“Reckon we might as well,” C.K. said.

So they came together, in the center of the room, for one last time, still smiling, and cut each other to ribbons.

Blind Tom Ransom, sitting on a stool inside the door, only heard it, a kind of scuffling, whistling sound, followed by a heavy swaying silence. And he heard the clackety noise, as the razors dropped to the floor—first one, then the other—and finally the great sack-weight sound of the two men coming down, like monuments.

“It’s all ovah now,” he said, “all ovah now.”

But there was no one to hear him; all the others had turned away from it towards the end. And they didn’t come back—only Harold, and then Old Wesley to stand by the bar, his hands on his hips, shaking his head. He looked at Harold.

“Boy, you bettah git on home now,” he said gently.

But before Harold could leave, a patrol-car slid up in front of the place, and Old Wesley directed the boy in through a curtained door behind the bar, as two tall white men in wide-brimmed hats got out of the car, slamming the doors and came inside.

“What the hell’s goin’ on here, Wesley?” asked one of them looking irately around the room and at the two bodies on the floor.

“Nothin’ goin’ on now, Officer,” said Wesley, “. . . them two got into argument . . . there weren’t no trouble otherwise.”

“How
you
doin’, Blind Tom?” asked the second policeman.

“Awright suh . . . who is it, Mistuh Kennedy?”

The first had gone over to the bodies.

“Put on some more light, Wesley . . . darker’n a well-digger’s ass in here—no wonder you have so much goddamn trouble.”

He turned one of the men over and put his flashlight on him.

“Goddamn they sure did it up right, didn’t they?”

The other came over and gave a low whistle.

“Boy, I reckon they
did
,” he said.

“You know ’em, Wesley?”

“Yessuh, I knows ’em.”

One of the policemen crossed to the bar and took a small notebook out of his shirt-pocket. The other one went back out and sat in the car.

The policeman at the bar looked up at the ceiling.

“You still ain’t got any more light in here than that?”

“Nosuh, waitin’ for my fixtures.”

The policeman gave a humorless laugh as he looked for a blank page in the notebook.

“You been waitin’ a
long
time now for them fixtures, ain’t you, Wesley?”

“Yessuh.”

“Okay, what’s their names?”

“One of ’em name ‘C.K. Crow’ . . . and the other—”

“Wait a minute. ‘C.K. Crow.’ Any address?”

“Why I don’t rightly know they address. I think C.K. live out on the old Seth Stevens place, out near Indian River.”

“You know how old he was?”

“C.K.? Why, he was thuty-five, thuty-six year old I guess.”

“How ’bout the other one?”

“His name was Emmett—everybody call him ‘Big Nail.’ ”

“Emmett what?”

“Emmett Crow.”

“They both named Crow?”

“Yessuh, that’s right.”

“What were they? Brothers?”

“Yessuh, that’s right.”

“Well, how old was
he
then?”

“Why I don’t rightly know now which one of them
was
the oldest of the two. They was always sayin’ they was a
year older
than the other one, each one of ’em say that, that
he
a year older. Then Big Nail, Emmett, he was away, you see, up Nawth—in Chicago or New York City, I believe it was . . . but they was both thuty-five, thuty-six year old.”

The policeman closed his book and put it in his pocket.

“They got any folks here?”

Old Wesley nodded. “We’ll look after ’em awright.”

The policeman stood staring at the bodies for a minute.

“What were they fightin’ about?”

“Why now I don’t rightly know. They got into argument, you see . . . between themselves. Wasn’t nobody could
stop
it.”

“What were they doin’, shootin’ craps?”

“Well, I wouldn’t know nothin’ ’bout
that—they
sho’ weren’t shootin’ no crap in
here,
I know
that
much!”

The policeman stopped at the door, and looked down at Tom.

“Don’t reckon
you
seen anything out of the ordinary goin’ on lately, have you, Blind Tom?”

Blind Tom laughed.

“Nosuh, ah
cain’t
say that ah have.”

“You gonna gimme a report on it though if you do, ain’t you, Blind Tom?”

“Why
sho’
ah is Mistuh Kennedy, you
knows
that ah is! Fust unusual thing ah see, why ah be down at de station an’ give a report,
in full!
”

They both laughed and the policeman patted Blind Tom on the shoulder and left.

When the car had pulled away, Harold came out of the room behind the curtain, and people began coming back into the bar.

Blind Tom was singing the blues.

“I jest wonder how C.K. feel,” said someone, “if he know he goin’ to be buried on Big Nail’s money. I bet he wouldn’t
like
it!”

Old Wesley frowned. “C.K. predate a good send-off as well as the next man. Besides,” he added, “C.K. weren’t never one to hold a grudge for
ver’
long.” He looked at Harold. “Ain’t
that
right, boy?”

“I can’t listen to it again,” said his mother, walking past the kitchen table, one hand raised to her head. “You’ll have to tell him yourself—I’ll tell your grandad; there’s no use in him hearing it the way you tell it. But you’ll have to tell your daddy.”

“Well, that’s the way it happened, dang it,” said Harold, frowning down at the empty plate in front of him.

“Well, I don’t care, I don’t want to hear it. Now you tell him and then you go wash. We’re goin’ to have supper in a few minutes.”

She walked out of the room and left Harold sitting alone at the table. Outside the dogs were barking, and he heard his father on the porch, stamping his feet, kicking the mud from his shoes; then the door opened and he came inside, still stamping his feet as though it were winter. He leaned the gun against the wall under a rack of others.

“I want you to clean that gun after supper, son,” he said. “Where’s your mother?”

“She’s upstairs,” said the boy.

“Looka here, boy,” said his father, smiling now, holding up a brace of fat bob-white quail, “ain’t they good ’uns?”

“C.K.’s dead, Dad,” said Harold, as he planned, as gravely as he could, not feeling anything except trying to measure up to the adult type of seriousness he believed the words must have.

“What’re you
talkin’
about, son?” demanded his father, scowling in anger and impatience, “didn’t you and him take that calf in . . .” He stamped over to the sink and lay the birds down there to turn and face the boy and have it out. “Now what’re you
talkin’
about!”

And for Harold it was only then, with the moment of his father’s disbelief, that the reality of it fell across his heart like a knife, and something jumped and caught inside his throat and knotted behind his eyes. He looked down at the table, shaking his head, wishing only to say that it wasn’t his fault—and then the thing inside his throat and burning behind his eyes broke loose, in a short terrible burst, and he stiffly raised one arm to his face to try and choke away the grotesque sobs, and the incredible tears—not the kind of tears he had known before, but tears of the first bewildering sorrow.

His father said nothing, frowning; then he came over and stood by him, and finally put one hand on his shoulder.

At the supper-table, no more was said about it, until once when Harold’s father sat for a moment gazing distraitly at the knife in his hand. “Damn niggers,” he said. “What did they git into a fight about anyway? A crap-game?”

“Drink some more milk, son,” said his mother, raising the big pitcher.

“What was it they were fightin’ about?” repeated his father.

Harold watched the glass in his hand, the white milk tumbling in.

“Aw I dunno,” he said, “they got into argument—about one thing and another, and then they got to fightin’—wasn’t nobody could stop it.”

“Hadn’t been a-shootin’ craps?” said his old grandfather, wolf-lean, brown as leather, brooding forward over his plate toward the boy like a hawk.

“No sir,” said Harold, “they weren’t doin’ nothin’ like that.”

The old man grunted and recommenced eating.

“I saw old Blind Tom the other day, Grandad,” said Harold after a minute, “. . . do you remember him?”

“Who?”

“Aw, you know, old Blind Tom Ransom—he asked to be
remembered
to you.”

“Remember
him?” said the old man, wiping his mouth, “why hell
yes,
I remember him. Now there was a goddamn good nigger, no two ways about it. Best hand in the county before his sight failed him.”

“Was he as good as they say he was, Grandad?”

“Picked a bale-a-day,” said the old man gravely, “rain or shine, rain or shine.”

“Did
he
sure enough pick seven-hun’red and twenty-three pounds in one day?”

“Sure as hell did! They got me down from the house to see it weighed in, Seven-hun’red-twenty-three pounds, dry-load. Damndest thing I ever seen. I always meant to write to the Association about it.” His old eyes, glinting with brief challenge, moved swiftly around the impassive faces at the table. “Why, I’ll bet it’s a
goddamn State record!
”

S
ID
P
ECKHAM AND HIS
wife were coast farmers and Sid was a veteran of World War II. They were eking out the narrowest sort of existence on a little plot of ground just east of Corpus Christi, about an eighth of a mile from the Gulf.

The cost of their farm was two hundred dollars. For one reason or another Sid had not been able to get a G.I. loan to buy the land outright, but he and Sarah had scraped together enough money for the down payment. Now, to meet the quarterly installments of twenty-five dollars, they depended entirely upon what could be raised there and sold for the vegetable markets of Corpus Christi, namely soft melons and squash.

Sid and Sarah were of a line of unimaginative, one-acre farmers who very often had not owned the land they worked, and whose life’s spring was less connected to the proverbial love of the land than twisted somehow around a vague acceptance of work, God’s will, and the hopeless, unsurprising emptiness of life. The only book in their little house was the Bible, which they never read.

For a time, before the war, they had lived on the even smaller farm of Sarah’s father, sharing a room in the back and working most of the day in the melon patch. Then Sid was gone, in the Army, for three years.

They had one letter from France, but for all it said of what was happening it could have been written from Fly, two miles away, or even from his own family’s place across the road.

Dear Sari

They told us all to write. Hope you are all well. I am fine. The place here and the food is all right. Rain yesterday here, and today. I hope you and the family are all right.

               God keep you

                    Sid Peckham

In other respects, the letter was an epitome of their relationship. Speech between them was empty and hushed.

Only sometimes now Sid spoke of the
films
he had seen in the Army. Then he was more expressive than at any other time.

“That one were right good,” he would say, “I seen it on the boat.”

Sarah would listen. They had never gone to see films before. But since the war, every Saturday they walked the two miles into Fly for the new movie. The movie in Fly played once on Saturday night and once again on Tuesday afternoon. Sid and Sarah went to the Saturday night showing, and they always left the house well before sundown in order to get good seats. All the seats were the same price, fifteen cents. They saw comedies and mysteries, westerns, dramas and classic histories, one a week for seven years.

In the darkened cinema their faces were like a single wooden mask. Sometimes Sarah had difficulty in grasping the mood of a film at all. Then she would try to take her cue from Sid, leaning out to turn and peer at his face. But it never told her anything, and as soon as he noticed he would push her away again back down into her own seat.

Only, if Sid had seen the film before, Sarah might watch him from the side, how he covered his mouth from time to time, nodding his head at the screen. The way this happened though, it never failed to strike Sarah as being different from what was happening at the same instant on the screen. And Sarah’s brow would go all dark furrowed, and she might draw her stiff fingers back and forth over the palm of her hand.