The foreman took Dove by the arm, led him to one side and whispered, ‘Take this and get off my God-by-Jesus deck.’ Dove looked down. It was a two dollar bill.
‘I got six comin’, mister.’
‘As high as I go.’ He had changed it for a fiver.
‘I’ll settle.’ Dove took it. The foreman went wearily to the rail, looking downriver and out to sea.
Down on the dock Dove took one last look up. The little man at the rail was grinning down. He waved the big brush at Dove. ‘Be work on time tomorrow, matey!’ he called. Dove waved back. Mighty mannerable fellow.
Yet felt a lingering sadness as he left the big river to know he wasn’t going to sea after all.
Later that day he discovered the door of the men’s room in the Southern Railway Station barred by a white-haired Negro porter. ‘Excuse me, pappy,’ Dove tried to get past.
‘Country boy, you got colored blood?’ Pappy demanded.
‘Naturally it aint white,’ Dove told him.
‘No funny business,’ the old Negro warned him, ‘I’m responsible here.’
Dove didn’t know what was wrong. He just felt wrong. And left the REST ROOM FOR COLORED in retreat.
He was bending above the water-fountain when he saw the porter coming at him again. The old man had been searching for someone like this in dreams for years.
‘You got colored blood, you caint drink this water.’
‘Aint everybody got colored blood, mister?’ By this time Dove really wanted to know.
‘You think you make a fool of me with fool questions,’ the old man answered, ‘but all you make a fool of is yourself. Boy, if you white, stay white. If you black, stay black and die. Now get out of my station and out of my sight.’
‘It purely wonders me,’ Dove brooded thoughtfully, ‘Why, a Christian don’t scarcely stand a chance for a drink of water in town no more. Looks like my crazy little pappy was right after all.’
His throat felt parched and he turned into the first doorway he saw with a Coca Cola sign over it. Coca Cola signs went all around this shady nook with nothing on its shelves but empty cokes. He rapped the counter with a dime.
A little brassiereless beauty, a real fence-corner peach all of nineteen appeared, opened a coke on a nail hooked to the counter, and let her shoulder strap slip to bare her left breast to its tinted nipple. Under the breast was tattooed the single word – Whiskey.
‘Aint this the By-Goddest weather you ever seen?’ Dove asked.
‘I’ve seen By-Godder,’ the fence-corner peach replied.
‘Now I reckon I got a nickel change comin’, m’am,’ Dove reckoned.
‘Reckon you awready got your change’ – and replaced the strap, looking bored.
‘You don’t feel maybe you made a slight errow, m’am?’
‘Right sure.’
‘How much fer a stror?’
‘Help yourself, country boy.’
‘Now there’s another funny thing,’ Dove marveled, taking four straws in an effort to get even, ‘you’re the second person in the past hour noted that. However do folks tell?’
The peach merely looked blank. When the straws would draw no more he bent each carefully and put down another dime.
This time she wiped the bottle with a counter cloth and slipped in a single straw. He took it from her with his eyes glued to that left strap.
It didn’t slip an inch.
But she rang up his dime and slammed the register so fast, just as the right strap fell away, that he thought she had punched the machine with the nipple. Now she merely leaned on the machine, resting the breast on the NO SALE sign.
Underneath this one was tattooed – Beer. Dove studied the word solemnly. ‘Do you mind if I spend an opinion, Miss? Somethin’ a bit personal?’ he asked at last.
‘Nothing you could tell me could possibly be personal.’
‘Why it strikes me you got a mite too much whitenin’ on,’ he told her all the same, ‘it make you look plumb puny.’
The blankness of her regard surpassed itself. She didn’t so much as blink. Just tipped the bottle’s last drop out, put the bottle away and replaced her strap.
‘M’am, I can’t help thinking there’s something dead up the tree.’
She raised one pencilled brow in the mildest of inquiries.
‘Yes?’
‘Last night I bought a sody the other side of the station ’n it were only five cents.’
‘That’s the other side of the station. They got a price war there.’
‘Hope nobody got kilt,’ he hoped and put down a third dime.
This time she opened the bottle, wiped it off, inserted the straw, rang up the dime, shut the register and stepped back all in a single motion. Yet the strap failed to fall. Dove drank slower.
Nothing.
‘How many sodies you sell in a single day m’am?’
‘’Bout as many as there are crows at a hog-killin’,’ she made a close guess.
‘Why, that’s a good few,’ Dove decided.
‘What did you come in here for, mister?’
‘Got barred from the water-founting.’
‘I think you’re wasting your money.’
‘After all, it’s my money.’
‘And so long as it’s money, it’s a-plenty,’ she pointed out – ‘but when it’s all spent it can get right scarce.’
‘I’ve heard that sometimes money don’t hardly last till it’s gone, that’s true. Or so I’ve been told. You think my forty-dollar might last that long?’
‘You spend it all on cokes it wont, if you follow me.’
‘I don’t follow you too near. All I know is this coke tastus right fine.’
‘It what?’
‘Tastus right fine. But what if I should put a dollar down here?’
‘Try one.’
Dove put it down and she had snapped it up before it touched the counter.
‘Now see if you can follow me.’
Somewhere at the bottom of that narrow passage a girl was laughing mirthlessly like a girl laughing at herself, and all its doors were numbered.
No light, no window, no sound. Dove stood lost in a burning blackout till he heard someone hooking a door. Then a little green light came up in a corner and the beer-and-whiskey beauty stood stripped to her slippers in a glow, a girl delicate as a deer.
‘Never did see such a purty girl afore even though you are a mite scarce-hipped,’ he told her. ‘I’m gittin’ a mighty urr to lewdle. Would you care to lewdle too?’
Later, with one foot planted on the floor to keep himself from falling off the narrow cot, he grew confidential.
‘My stomach is swoll,’ he told her.
‘Next time drink whiskey,’ she advised him and added, ‘Country boy, your time is long up.’ Then hooking his trousers on one green-tinted toenail, derricked and dropped them with dainty disdain across his knees at the same moment that his wallet dropped from the pocket and curiously vanished beneath the sheets.
‘M’am,’ Dove declared, ‘you are the very darnedest galperson ever I have met up with.’
‘How’s that?’ she sounded suspicious about something.
‘Why, them toenails.’
‘You’ve had your money’s worth and more,’ she decided as though suddenly resolved not to be good friends after all. ‘Get dressed and get out.’
‘I’m just layin’ here gettin’ myself up an apology to you, m’am. I’ll have it done quite soon.’
‘Apology for what?’