That night the chocolate must have been just right.
Though himself without manners enough to carry grits to a bear, Fort was ashamed of shabby companions. Above a cup of chicory coffee he would study Dove so steadily that the boy would begin to wonder what he could have done wrong so soon in the day with the sun scarcely up over Melpomene Street.
‘Your whole family eat with their hats on?’ Fort finally asked.
Dove set his straw skimmer to one side of his plate.
‘Never heard of hat racks,’ Fort commented bitterly to the bitter window.
‘Your whole family drink out of the saucer?’ he asked.
‘I like coffee poured out in the sasser,’ Dove explained firmly. ‘Would you kindly pass me the toastes bread? I like it better with a touch of long-sweetenin’, but since there aint no long-sweetenin’ I’ll just give it a touch of the coffee in my sasser.’
Fort lived in a welter of unwashed socks, cigarette butts, icesticks, Bull Durham and strewn want-ads. What he was through with he tossed on the floor and never washed a dish.
‘Got the megrims again from eatin’ too light,’ he accused the human race in general and Dove Linkhorn in particular. ‘So dern hongry if I went out in the sun I’d be prostated like a dog.’
‘There’s a loaf of store bread on the fireboard, Fort,’ Dove told him.
‘I’d as soon let the moon shine in my mouth as to eat light bread,’ Fort spurned the baker’s common loaf.
‘Well,’ Dove thought it all over a minute, ‘light bread’s better than nothin’. I’ve tried both.’
But Fort, moved by the vision of himself prostrated like a dog with people stepping over him, rose and announced, ‘Turnin’ over a new leaf – takin’ care of Number One!’
And left in a rush to start taking care of Number One.
‘I do believe hard times is crazyin’ him,’ Dove told Little Luke later.
If Fort cast gloom wherever he went, Little Luke was a man whose life was one long yak. A go-getter with a little pug face like a rouged pekinese and a breath to cripple a kitten. ‘I’m unfinancial for the moment,’ he never blamed anyone but himself for being broke – ‘I was selling holy stones for luck and like a fool
I sold them all. Didn’t keep a single one for myself. Carelessness, carelessness.’
‘I don’t believe in nothing like that,’ Dove told him, ‘and wouldn’t buy one from a stranger if I did.’
Luke always had a commission coming in, a percentage going out and an urgent transaction in the offing.
The offing was in a shambling gin mill called Dockery’s Dollhouse, down in the district where all his strange business was done. Others said gin was a weakness with him, but Luke had a different name for it.
He called it wanderlust. Wherever he went some Miss Jane or Miss Molly pled with him to settle down with her on some fine old Southern estate. Luke would put her affairs in order, assuaging her fears by day and her lusts by night, until she’d surprise him preparing his blanket roll – they all went hysterical on him then. If he left her now she’d kill herself. Things had gotten so bad he’d taken to sneaking off in the middle of the night.
‘That part I can readily believe,’ Fort would comment.
‘Met Miss Molly at a Memphis candy-breakin’ ’n she treated me like I was somethin’ on a stick. Had this fine old home in Greenville and a restaurant chain – oh the sweet potato pie that woman put out!’ – Luke went lying blithely on – ‘the sentimental little fool. When she seen I had my mind set on leaving she give me five-dollar meal ticket good in either Memphis or Atlanta.’
‘Was that before or after she killed herself?’ Fort inquired mildly.
‘I’m plenty worried about her,’ Luke implied darkly.
And went on the nod right where he sat, his Bottled-in-the-Barn just within reach.
‘Watch out for that carnival-talkin’ jailbird,’ Fort warned Dove the moment Luke began to snore. ‘He’ll talk a country boy like you into some fool operation and you’ll be the one to take the rap, mark my word. Watch out, goodbuddy.’
Goodbuddy promised he’d watch out.
As soon as Fort slept Luke opened one glimmering eye.
‘Ssssss – Tex,’ he whispered to Dove – ‘Watch out for that piss-complected faker. He’s been in every clink between Miami and Houston. He hollered on me so he’ll holler on you. Watch out, Tex.’
Tex promised to watch out.
‘That’s what I call a couple considerate fellows,’ Dove realized, ‘watchin’ out for my interests in shifts.’
One night Luke came banging and jangling in, trailing odors of seafood and gin. ‘Srimps! He’p yorse’ves, boys!’ He bounced a greasy bag on the table, put another nameless bottle beside it, fished two Spanish onions out of his pocket and invited everyone in town.
‘Don’t taste quite fresh,’ Fort grieved, filling his face, ‘taste a mite swivelly.’
‘The scripters says it’s a sin to eat anything that parts the hoof or don’t chew cood but I like srimps all the same,’ Dove reported.
Luke began stacking quarters and halves ostentatiously. Somebody had gotten rich fairly fast.
‘I’m jest eatin’ them because I need sustenance so bad,’ Fort explained, his voice round with self-pity – ‘two orangey icesticks just aint enough to sustain a man till evening.’
‘Take this for tomorrow’s sustenance then,’ Luke sent a quarter to him with a small disdainful finger-flick. Dove tightened lest Fort return the insult with his fist.
‘They don’t know how to make hot sauce in this town,’ Fort observed, pocketing the quarter as if he’d just earned it.
Orange ice stuck to his chin. Hot sauce colored his chops. Hairs stuck out of his nose and snot hung hard to the hairs.
‘You want one too, Tex?’ Little Luke had another quarter ready to roll.
‘Thank you kindly all the same,’ Dove declined.
‘I didn’t think so,’ Luke concluded without looking at Fort.
A shrimp’s tail had lodged between Fort’s teeth and he was having the devil’s own time prying the tip of it with his tongue.
‘Mighty funny they don’t clean these things before selling them to folks,’ he protested as if he’d paid double for something. Dislodging the tail at last, he spat it on the floor.
‘I would eat one of them ing-urns,’ Dove announced.
Luke looked confused.
‘He means one of them—’ Fort indicated an onion.
It was true enough that two orangey ices wasn’t enough to sustain a man like Fort till evening. It wasn’t enough to sustain Dove either. Yet each evening he announced, ‘I got to get a soon start in the morning. Will one of you fellers holler me up?’
And lugged a sample case into the day’s first light, telling half-awake housewives, ‘A Store at Your Door.’ Past the Confederate Veterans’ Home. A Store at Your Door down Humanity Street and up Gentilly Road. Rapping the front door or rapping the back down Peoples Avenue.
Peoples to Almonaster, front doors and rear. As the forenoon heat began to heap both sides of Spain Street down to the wharves.
By noon, with his case lighter only by sale of one jar of hair-straightener, he’d be sitting on the Desire Street dock admiring a ship from Norway or Peru with a big nickel bunch of bananas beside him and one little dry Spanish ing-urn.
Dreaming and peeling, Dove would recall all the storied shores he had almost seen. Through half-closed lids his thoughts rocked down, down the great river to the almost-sea. The masted and magic almost-sea. Rocking so far out on the dangerous waves it was really too far, and so would rock himself gently back to shore: the sheltering home-harbor shore. Where friendly street lamps lit the way to some old chili parlor door. And half-dreaming heard voices of women of his little lost town