“You know today’s my birthday?” he said.
“No, sir.”
“Well it is. You know how old I am?”
“No, sir.”
“Guess.”
“Forty?”
He laughed. “You tryin’ to flatter me, little boy, that what you’re tryin’ to do? I ain’t seen forty in a long time. Try seventy-one.”
“Try seventy-eight if you a day,” Rosy Mae said.
She had come out of the house with a glass of lemonade for me. In spite of her size, way she walked, she moved silent as an Indian when she wanted to. I hadn’t even heard the gravel crunch.
“You don’t know nothin’, woman.”
“I know what you full of. You ain’t seen seventy in at least eight or nine years.”
“Well, I don’t look seventy, now do I?”
“Sure you do. You look about a hundred and forty-five, you axe me.”
“You go on back in the house. Me and the young man here was talkin’. This ain’t none of your business. Why don’t you get in there and fry up some chicken or somethin’. I could use some chicken myself. I ain’t got nothin’ but a bologna sandwich in this bag.”
“And about two quarts a whiskey in you already, ’bout half a bottle of that there is RC, rest full of cheater.”
“Now I was just tellin’ the boy here to stay away from alcohol, wasn’t I, boy? And he saw me open this bottle. Ain’t that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why don’t you get on in the house, Mr. Stanley. I got some cookies I done made fresh for you in there. I’ll carry yo’ lemonade back for you. You don’t need to be hangin’ around out here with this old man.”
“Yes, ma’am. Happy birthday, sir.”
“You damn right it’s happy. Happy, happy, happy.”
I slipped the Tarzan book into my back pocket, started crutching for the inside, Rosy Mae following, Nub dragging up the train.
As we went inside, Buster called out to Rosy, “Your ass looks like two greased pigs squirmin’ up against one another in a sack, woman. But I want you to know I ain’t got nothin’ against pork.”
“Least they happy pigs,” she said. “Ain’t nothin’ happy about you.”
“They so happy, why don’t you take ’em out of the sack and let ’em smile, run around a bit.”
“You ain’t never gonna see these here pigs, you ole fool.”
———
INSIDE AT THE TABLE, I said, “Is he really over seventy?”
“He been around long ’fo I was born. Around when my mama a girl. But he right, he don’t look it. He look pretty good, actually. Got that white kinky hair and all.”
“It’s black, Rosy Mae.”
“No, it’s white, and looks better when he leaves it white, and he used to. He got to puttin’ shoe polish on it now.”
“Shoe polish?”
“That’s right. Get up close, you can smell it. Makes him look smart he leaves it white. And he is smart, not like me.”
“You’re not stupid, Rosy Mae. I told you that.”
“Well, I ain’t educated.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“Thing about Buster is I don’t like him.”
“You sound like you like him.”
“Do I? Well, he could be liked he didn’t drink. I done had me a drinkin’ man. I ain’t gonna have me another. ’Sides, he too old for me. And he got a mean streak. Not bad as Bubba’s, I guess, but I’m all through with them mean men and moody men.”
“He doesn’t sound like he likes you, Rosy.”
“Oh, he likes me all right. I can tell.”
Rosy Mae went away to attend to other matters. I sat drinking lemonade, eating cookies. I pulled the Tarzan book from my pocket and went back to reading, but I didn’t read long.
I crutched outside, Nub beside me. I think he really wanted to stay inside in the fan-cooled room, but he followed me. He had that sort of dutiful stride he adopted when he was working against his will. Moving fast, head down, tail swinging. A dog on a mission.
It was near dark now and the movie would be starting before long. I leaned on my crutches and looked at all the speaker posts sticking up like runted trees, at the projection booth and the back fence, thought about what was beyond it.
Buster was sitting in my lawn chair with his RC. He called across the lot to me.
“You finally shake that old witch?”
I didn’t want Rosy Mae to hear that kind of talk, so I started working my crutches, heading on over to him.
“Me and Rosy Mae are friends,” I said.
“You are? Go over to her house a lot?”
“She lives here.”
“Where you keep her?”
“She sleeps on the couch.”
“Not good enough for a bed?”
“We don’t have another bed. She’s staying with us until she can do otherwise.”
“How come she’s stayin’ with you?”
I didn’t think that was any of his business, so I said, “She just doesn’t have a place to live right now.”
“What you mean when you say friends, is she waits on you, takes care of you. But that don’t make you friends.”
“It’s her job. She gets paid for it.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bet it ain’t even half what a white woman would get to do that kind of work.”
“I don’t know any white women who do that kind of work.”
“True enough. Now think on that.”
“Well, I got to go back.”
I turned to go, and Nub, who had once again lay down on the ground, stood up. He sort of let out his breath, seeming to suggest I was a boy who couldn’t make up his mind.
“Hey, it’s my birthday. I could use a little company. That dog, he’s somethin’ way he follows you around.”
“That’s Nub,” I said. “He’s a good dog.”
“Yeah, he looks all right. Ain’t nothin’ like a good dog, is there?”
“No, sir.”
“How’d you do that to your leg?”
I told him. I didn’t mention that I went in the Stilwind house, but when I finished, he said, “You must have got scared up the house on the hill, way you’re talkin’. Scared enough to ride out in front of a truck.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, but I can tell. I always hear that house is haunted. Kids think that. It ain’t though. You know what you saw?”
“I didn’t say I saw anything.”
“You saw old Mrs. Stilwind. She’s crazy. Runs off from where she is in the old folks home, goes up there. Ain’t no one gets in any kind of hurry to go fetch her. They know where she is. They go up there and get her when it pleases them. She comes to that house through the back, where the woods are. There’s a trail, leads right to the old folks home. Didn’t know that, did you?”
“You’re sure?”
“I know coloreds work at the old folks home, wipe them old white asses and give them their green peas. They tell me about it. Now, I could be just yarn’n you, but which yarn sounds more likely? Think about it. Don’t knowin’ it could have been Mrs. Stilwind make what you saw up there less spooky?”
“I guess.”
“Then you did see her?”
“I saw a shadow that looked like an old woman.”
“You could have seen just what you thought you saw. Shadow of an old woman. Not a ghost. Life has some clear answers, and then it has things where the questions ain’t even clear. Ain’t like in a movie where it all comes together all the time. You know who Sherlock Holmes is?”
“I’ve seen him on TV.”
“Read the stories. Mr. Sherlock Holmes got a sayin’ go somethin’ like this. Take away the possible from somethin’, show that ain’t it, whatever is left, no matter how impossible, is it. That’s what he says. Or somethin’ close to it. But you see, first you got to get rid of the possible.
“You got to look at a thing careful-like. If you done set to believe somethin’, you got to know you likely to believe it even if there ain’t no truth there. Followin’ me?”