‘We aint buying no coffee pot, mister,’ the housewife assured Smiley the moment she saw the hardware in his hand.
Smiley fixed his face as if to eat mush out of a churn. ‘It’s not a pot, Madam. And it’s strictly not for sale. It’s a French Dripolator and it’s a goodwill gift, no strings attached, from Old Dominion to you. Take it. It belongs to you.’
‘I’m greatly obliged, but we already got a pot.’ The woman’s eyes shifted to the lopsided figure in the yellow-knob shoes.
‘Jeb Stuart’s grandson!’ Dove came to attention.
‘At ease,’ Smiley ordered below his breath and hurried into his pitch. ‘Madam, this here genuine French Dripolator is shortly goin’ on the market nationally for three-dolla-eighty-five cents with a national campaign behind it. What we need now is kindly folks who won’t be selfish about it when they find they got the best cup of coffee in town. The kind who’ll want to share with their neighbors and spread the word about our offer. That’s the friendly sort of thing is going to give our national campaign a headstart – I said at ease – of course if you don’t care to cooperate I’m sure the lady next door will be interested.’
She’d sooner risk the black death than have her next-door neighbor own something she didn’t. Dove watched her sign for receipt of the pot wistfully.
‘Just a mere formality,’ Smiley explained the need of her signature to the woman, ‘so’s the company won’t think I sold it to my wife.’ Even to Dove the laugh that followed sounded hollow.
The fraud consummated, Smiley handed Dove a pencil, receipt book and pot. ‘But don’t let go of that thing till you got that signature,’ was his parting warning. And off he went to lie in the shade and dream up new ways to beat Old Dominion.
Dove was relieved that his goodbuddy hadn’t asked him if he knew how to use the pencil. It was real nice to have it to carry behind his ear all the same.
He came to an intersection where one road led to town and the other away. The town road was festooned, street lamp to street lamp, with welcoming pennants; it was wide and newly paved. The other was lampless and pennantless and plainly led nowhere at all. Without hesitation Dove chose the nowhere road. For that was the only place, in his heart of hearts, that he really wanted to go.
Shuffling loosely along in his proud bright shoes, occasionally tucking in his sea-colored tie, he came to an iron-wrought fence where a Negro woman was shearing a bush; and waited in hope she would look up and ask, ‘How do I get a pot like that?’
But all she did was study him, shears in hand, as if Old Dominion might have sent him out to rape and rob her and she was nicely put together at that. He shifted the pot to his other hand. It was hanging so heavy he scolded it, ‘Pot, you give me the wearies.’ And his shoes gave him such a punishing pinch, as though they were on the side of the pot.
He came to a four-story tenement built flush to the broken walk to get the last inch of space, where another Negro girl, her face still full of an easy sleep, leaned an arm against a patched and rusted screen.
Dove held up the pot to catch the sun.
‘Little ol’ cawfee pot. Git it fer free.’
She opened the door and grasped the pot’s handle, taking his word as fast as that. But Dove was a little too smart for her. He kept hold of the spout.
‘Got to sign your name for you gits it.’
‘Signs you anythin’, cawfee pot man.’ She plucked the pencil off his ear and scribbled a name on a receipt blank. Old Dominion was going to like his work, Dove knew.
‘Awntie and Mothaw might like pots too,’ the girl told Dove, and hollered up the stair.
Two older women, as if waiting for just such a call, came clumping so eagerly down the steps that they wedged in the narrow way – for a moment neither could gain an inch. Then worked themselves free and the winner came up breathlessly.
‘Whut you got now, lucky girl?’
‘Got me a goddamn pot.’
‘You write for us, Minnie-Mae, then we gits too.’
‘My own handwrite is so poorly, Miss,’ Dove confessed, ‘I’d be most obliged if you’d do just that.’
Minnie-Mae snatched his receipt book, tore out two order blanks, scribbled on both and handed them back.
‘Old Dominion thanks you, Miss,’ Dove assured her, ‘I’ll deliver both pots tomorrow.’
‘My girlfriend might like one too,’ Minnie-Mae invited Dove to step one landing up.
‘You oblige me again,’ Dove assured her as she urged him ahead, with Awntie and Mothaw following heavily. It was just one of those days when everyone is on your side.
For from window to window, lightless passage to lightless hall, the wakening whisper went – ‘Come git you a cawfee pot.’ Doorway to door, to friend to foe, Awntie and Mothaw went spreading the word. Whether it was Huey Long or Old Dominion giving things away again, nobody cared a doodle in a wood. Negroes dark or Negroes light, high-yellow, blue-black, gold-toothed or toothless, everyone liked coffee. Minnie-Mae was ripping receipts and handing them for upreaching hands to sign and return as fast as she could reach and tear.
‘Come git yo’ goddamn pot!’
Dove couldn’t make out a word of the lingo ringing about – it was that Negro-to-Negro jargon that accents English like French and French like English then slurs the rest when white ears of any nation listen.
Dove didn’t care – he was getting rich. When Minnie-Mae ran out of blanks he raced down to the street for more. Business was progressing on a downward grade to new rates of normality, opportunity was being equalized, time was money.
Wreneger, with two of the crew, were waiting for him at the corner.
‘Where you been, son?’ Without a word Dove handed him fifty orders, signed and sealed. Smiley’s aides, one a towering Florida cracker and the other a pint-sized Georgian, crowded in to see how Texas did it.
Smiley thumbed through the packet swiftly, thumbed part way back as though to make certain of something scarcely credible, then ripped it straight down the middle and fifty French Dripolators went blowing like confetti down Elysian Fields Avenue.
Dove ran one down before he understood – then let it blow after the others like watching all hope die.
‘Goodbuddy’ – a sort of soft horror had caught in Smiley’s throat – ‘Who told you we sold to Negras?’
Dove sat heavily on the curb, took off his left shoe and pressed the sockless toes. Smiley mounted post above him.
‘Git up, boy.’
Dove switched to the right-foot toes. They hurt like everything.
‘Face up to it, boy,’ the Georgian urged him.
‘Got to face up,’ the Floridan counseled him.
Dove’s glance took in all three. ‘I resign from you-all,’ he resigned from all three.
Smiley bent swiftly, scooped up Dove’s proud shoes, handed the left to the Georgian and the right to the Floridan – ‘Whut’s it going to be, boy – pot or shoes?’
Dove, risen, found his voice at last – ‘Them shoes costes more ’n any ol’ tin pot!’
‘Aint no ol’ tin pot, boy,’ the Georgian defended Old Dominion, ‘you know right well that there’s a genuine French Dripolator.’
‘Get goin’, son,’ the Floridan advised him.
Dove shuffled down the grass while Smiley padded the pavement the whole barefoot way back to the tenement.
‘Mister,’ Dove promised Smiley Wreneger at the door, ‘you wait here. I’ll git you back your sorry pot.’
Smiley snapped open his watch, gave it a glance and closed it with a decisive click. ‘Don’t like to law a man. You got five minutes.’
The moment Dove got a door between himself and Smiley he thought, ‘This might take more than five,’ and latched it. Then poked his head inside the beaded curtain Minnie-Mae called a door. Her eyes glowed upon him from a farther corner like two plums in a bowl of cream.