South of Haunted Dreams (7 page)

Around the corner and down the incline from the bank, there is, at the far end of a parking lot, a place to eat. All I really want is a sandwich. A greasy burger will do, some chips and a cold drink to take back to the square. According to the sign hanging over the door, this place, Mariah's, calls itself a delicatessen, but it's a bit fancier than a sandwich shop. I can tell as soon as I enter. They're going to make me sit, put a napkin in my lap, and wait until someone comes to serve me. Lunch could take an hour or more. With luck, since I've missed the noon rush, it won't take too long. I'm aching for my nap.

The tables are butcher blocks lacquered shiny. Wooden chairs, a few booths, lots of light flooding in through the windows. It's the kind of place office workers, clerks and secretaries, treat themselves to only once in a while. Salesmen treat each other to lunch here and compare notes, an excuse to have a few drinks in the middle of the day.

Off to the left is a bar with those high tables where you have to stand up to eat and drink. That section is empty and would suit me fine, but a skinny young man in a white shirt and black trousers that are too long comes to me the moment I step through the door.

“May I help you, sir?”

“Yeah.” I answer looking around, not looking at him, not overly polite. “Can I get some lunch?”

“Right this way, please.”

He yanks a menu from the stand and leads me into the back room. It's empty, away from the few other customers. And he sticks me in a little booth in the corner.

“How's this?”

“Fine,” I tell him, but I don't really know. How can I be sure?

I'm dressed pretty shabbily, a sweaty T-shirt and a pair of old dingy trousers. You can't tell that I've just gotten off a motorcycle, that I'm touring the country and that I have an excuse for looking grubby. To him I probably just look scummy and poor. He may even be wondering if I have enough money for lunch.

A funny thing about restaurants, you can never really know why they seat you in a particular spot. A section for those who smoke and one for those who don't. Tables for two, tables for four or more. Certain places for young men alone, perhaps. Spacing the customers when possible to offer a bit of privacy, to give all the waitresses an equal shot at tips. Or.…

Does he tuck me away in this corner to keep me out of sight? If yes, is he hiding me because I'm grubby, or because I'm black?

The South wins again.

I
am
black. I know that. I can't stop
being
black. But I don't have to be reminded at every turn, do I? I certainly don't need to remind myself, to limit myself in that way. And it
is
limiting, confining. Once you start thinking in terms of race, everything that happens, every person you meet, every circumstance, everything on earth always gets defined in terms of race, ours and theirs, us and them. And everyone else becomes
THOSE OTHER PEOPLE.

It's so tiring, the constant racism, the constant wondering and worrying, the constant vigilance. Is it this, is it that? It steals your energy, clogs your pores, makes your hair fall out. It makes your food taste funny.

Did someone spit in my drink?

A cute little waitress comes over, young and very happy, as if there might be nothing at all on her mind more important than her boyfriend. There's a college nearby. She's probably a student. She smiles sweetly. She pours iced tea into my glass.

“Do you know what you're going to have?”

A burger, fries, and a small Caesar salad.

“Is there someplace I can wash my hands?” I would like to sound as gruff as possible, displeased as I was about being stuck in the corner, but facing her smile and her politeness, it isn't easy.

“Yes, sir.” She points. “Right through there and make a left.”

When I come back I slouch across the booth. I lean back against the wall, arms folded across my chest, and put my feet up. I close my eyes, shut out thoughts and light. Darkness softly enfolds me.

From somewhere I hear singing. Negro spirituals far in the distance. Someone singing the blues. “King” Oliver on Bourbon Street.

A little black kid tapping my shoulder, asking if I need a shine, wearing the cap on his head backwards. In the barbershop behind him, black men beckoning but I can't tell if they're calling the boy or if they're calling me. Big smiles. Happiness pouring out. Until the explosion. A bright light. The boy vanishes. The barbershop disappears in the flash.

The sun has shifted. The bright sunlight streams through the window and stings my eyes. Rays of light cross the room, dust suspended and swirling in narrow shafts. I blink a couple of times to clear my vision.

I must have dozed.

Outside in the street, two motorcycles are roaring past. The bikes are old, the kind that make much noise and sound like cannon fire.

One man rides solo, the other has a woman strapped to his back. Both men have long hair, their big potbellies bouncing on their thighs. The woman looks haggard and hard. She wears no helmet.

I take a deep breath and smell food.

The waitress has set my plate before me. She stands above me, smiling like an angel of mercy, holding the pitcher of tea, poised to pour more as soon as I nod yes.

I smile kindly and thank her. Even if I wanted to be gruff, with her there it would be hard even to pretend. She disarms me with her own kindness.

“Having a hard day?”

“About like all days,” I reply. “Thinking too much, I guess.”

“We all get those days now and again,” she says, sounding like an old veteran, preparing for a career of missed opportunities, still waiting tables when she is old and divorced with kids to put through school. I'm waiting for her to call me sugar, the way old waitresses often do.

“And there's nothing you can do about them,” she says, “but smile a little. I find it always helps if you smile a little. Sometimes it even helps you beat the heat.”

She smiles.

“If you want more tea or if you need anything else, just holler.”

I settle back and relax. The burger's not bad.

It comes to me now that the waitress reminds me of someone, a young ballerina I once met in Washington, D.C. I had gone with a friend to fetch her from the airport.

“Did you have a good flight?” I asked her.

“Yes, sir.”

She was about nineteen, about the same age as this waitress, very pretty, and like the waitress, much too polite.

“You're from the South, aren't you?” Even without the accent it was evident.

“Yes, sir,” she said. “From Mississippi.”

I wanted to ask her if in Mississippi they always called black men “sir,” but I preferred to imagine that she had been raised to be polite to all her elders, to call all men “sir,” and to say “yes, ma'am” to all the women. It was nice. But she made me feel old.

“You don't have to say ‘yes, sir' to me,” I told her. “I'm not that old. Okay?”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

The South.

When I had finished eating, the waitress came and cleared the dishes away.

“Dessert?”

There was nothing on the menu I wanted.

“No. I'm quite satisfied,” I said. “Unless…”

“Yes, sir?”

A gush of air escaped my nose, a little laugh.

“You don't have a coconut pie stashed in the back somewhere, do you?”

“No, sir. We sure don't. Sorry.”

She left the bill. I checked her addition to make sure there wasn't a mistake. Sure enough, there was.

I debated, but not long, whether to point it out. The mistake was in my favor.

When she came back to collect, I pointed out the error.

“It seems,” I said, “you forgot to add on my salad.”

“Sssh,” she whispered. “I didn't forget. But you looked hungry and real beat. I thought I'd treat you.”

She smiled. I'm sure I was frowning.

There is something about unmitigated generosity that brings out the paranoic in me. It is not much different from unprovoked hostility. At some point you sit up, you look around, and you wonder, Why me?

Was it her, was it me? Was it the full moon? Or something in the air?

When I finished my lunch, I went back to the square and lay on the grass. The ground in the shade was cool and damp. I put my jacket down, lay on it, used my helmet as an uncomfortable pillow. I lay there looking up, watching the sun shift in the sky, watching the branches part in the slightest breeze and come together again. The bright light sneaked at odd intervals between the gaps in the leaves. Shadows crossed my face. I covered my eyes with my left arm. It wasn't long before I had fallen asleep.

I don't know how long I lay sleeping in that square, but I awoke stiff and not much refreshed. In fact I was just as tired as when I had started the nap, maybe more.

On the bench near me a man was sitting, watching me. He startled me. I sat up quickly and stretched. He watched me awaken.

“I never like sleeping on the ground,” he said. “I never get comfortable.”

“I don't like it much either,” I said. “Bugs crawl on you and you start to itch.”

“Yeah, that's it all right. You wouldn't think something so tiny as an ant could irritate you so. Then you get a blade of grass in your ear and you think it's a big bug going for your brain or something. The slightest things start to drive you crazy.”

I laughed.

“Exactly,” I said. “I know exactly what you mean. I'm a city fellow; I have to be really tired before I can do it, before I can sleep on the ground.”

We laughed together, old friends already, sharing something as simple as itching and scratching.

“Then you must have been mighty tired,” he said. “The way you were snoring.”

I giggled, put my finger to my chest and put on that
Who, me?
expression. He nodded.

“I guess I was.”

He was funny the way he just sat there.

I stood up and stretched some more.

“And I'm still tired.”

“Is that your bike? She's a beauty.”

He scooted over on the bench, the first movement he had made. There was plenty of room. He didn't have to move. But he slid over by way of invitation for me to sit beside him. We shook hands. He held mine a long long time, almost as if he were reading me through my skin and bones and the texture of my palm. And as he read mine, I read his.

His fingers were long and bony, the skin scaly. The palm of his hand was calloused and rough. His grip was strong. He was a farmer, I guessed, or maybe a carpenter. The sun had darkened his face. His eyes were pale.

He grinned. He looked hard into my eyes for longer than was acceptable. I stared back, locked onto his gaze and refused to blink. He squeezed my hand harder. I squeezed his. His stare became uncomfortable. Then it became unbearable. I flinched first. I looked away.

“Where are you from? You're not from around here.”

“No, I'm not.”

“What the hell are you doing down here?” he said. “You on vacation? Because if you are, this is one hell of a place to spend it.”

“I'm just passing through,” I said.

He said his name was Franklyn. He had lived in or near Bowling Green all his life. And yes, he had been a farmer, and he had been a well digger, and he had worked in construction.

“Whatever it takes,” he said. “That's what I'll do.”

I stroked my beard in thought. My hand smelled of Franklyn's hand, a strong odor that was the smell of the grass I had just lain in, the smell of the soil, the smell too of sweat. A man's history, the battles he has fought, won and lost, can be read in the lines of his face, in his smile and in his eyes, but in his hands as well.

I looked at my own hand.

“And you, I figure, work in an office,” he said. “But you don't like it. You'd rather be out—I won't say fishing, because you're a city boy—but you'd rather be outside. Freedom, motorcycles, and all that. You got you a bit of education and you're wondering why you haven't made a million dollars.”

I just shrugged. We both laughed.

“Everybody wants to make a million dollars.”

The breeze picked up warm and gentle. It caressed my face. I closed my eyes to feel it and the sun came through the trees.

“Nice, isn't it?” he said. “Almost a little too nice.”

I looked at him. He had closed his eyes too, doing what I had done.

“So how have you been getting along?” I asked.

“Well, to tell you the truth,” he said, “I've been wondering why I haven't made a million dollars too.”

He laughed out loud. His head tilted back and his laughter pealed across the square.

“But how are you going to make a million dollars,” he said, “just sitting all day on a park bench?”

A leaf had fallen onto his shoulder. He flicked it off.

“When I figure that out,” he said, “man! I'll really have me something. But in the meantime I'll just sit here and enjoy the sun and conversation with a stranger. That's almost like having a million dollars, don't you think?”

“Better,” I said.

“Well,” he said. “That depends on the stranger and on the conversation.”

We sat a few minutes looking out across the square. It was a little busier now. Teenagers had come down to hang out.

“Look at those kids,” Franklyn said. “Black kids, white kids, just as natural together. You'd think they didn't know nothing about what used to go on. Maybe they shouldn't.”

“Has it stopped?”

“Hell no, it ain't stopped. It might not never stop. But it's a damn sight different in a whole lot of ways than it used to be. Funny thing is, I can't always tell if that's good or bad. One thing's for sure, it ain't never going back to the way things was. Too many people like you won't let that happen.”