‘Sun aint bright,’ Dove observed, ‘fact is it look like we might have a little weather.’
Fort snapped his glasses on and left.
‘Weak eyes,’ Dove concluded as the first drums of the rain began. Began, and paused, and began again to a slow and funerary beat.
‘I would most likely be married and well-fixed by now, keepin’ my clothes in a sweetwood chest and taking the paper in the baseball season if I could but make words out of letters,’ Dove dressed himself in his daydream now wearing terribly thin, ‘with a girl who could read ’n write too.’ N little kids – I’d learn them how to do it my own self.’ Anything could happen to a man who could make words from letters.
The smells of coffee-and-banana dock, warehouse and orange-wharfed shore were borne into the room on the wash of a rain that had no shore at all. Beneath it banana boats were moving out to sea. Trailer and truck were bringing peanuts and grapefruit to town below it. Endless freights moved east, moved west, by plane, by boat, by passenger train. By highways dry and highways wet everyone but himself was getting to be a captain of something or other.
Everyone but one forgotten Linkhorn bogged down in a room where the blues came on and the old rain rapped this door then, like somebody’s grandmother seeking forever her long lost first born.
And it seemed to Dove that the sun had gone down the same morning that Terasina’s arms had last locked in love behind his neck, that her good thighs in love had last drawn him down and her good mouth had last loved his.
‘You were my onliest,’ he admitted at last, ‘but we only got to B. These days when I don’t get to see you are plumb squandered like the rest of all them letters. My whole enduren life you were the only human to try to see could I live up to the alphabet. Then I would of had a chance to rise like others.’
Luke came in on a skip and a grin and stood in the middle of the room drenched, drunk, hatless, the laces out of his shoes, the shirt out of his pants, the pants half-buttoned; the picture of a contented man.
‘Take off your jacket, Luke,’ Dove invited him, for the jacket was clinging to the skin.
Luke slapped his thigh and did his little joy-jig. ‘It’s all in people’s minds, boy – business is better than ever if you only let yourself think it is.’ And shook himself like a duck.
‘You’re soaking,’ Dove pointed out.
Luke turned stern. ‘What the hell is the matter with you, son? Opportunity is knocking the door down and you’re beefing about a little rain.’
‘You looked kind of damp is all I meant.’
‘Son, you been alone too much, brooding here by yourself. Smile, damn you, smile. Let a smile be your umbrella, boy.’
‘Reckon I am a mite fevery at that,’ Dove conceded. ‘Havin’ no breakfastes ’n thinkin’ of bygones give me the morning-wearies.’
Luke brought the flat of his palm down on the table so hard he almost lost his balance. ‘Why didn’t you say so, son?’ He began turning dirty plates over looking for something. ‘Where’s my check? I have a small check somewhere around here.’
‘Must be so small it’s not to be seen with the naked eye. Fact is, the landlady came up but she didn’t bring no check. She come up for to tell she wants three-thirty a week for the set of us.’
Luke stared at Dove unseeing while his brain, like a pinball machine, toted an unexpected score. His face lit triumphantly. ‘Chargin’ us for a place where the roof leaks so bad a man gets his bedclothes soaked in his sleep!’ He leaped on Fort’s bed, stabbed the ceiling with a jackknife and down he jumped again. Dove rushed the dishpan to the bed in time to catch the first raindrop.
The second drop preened its muscles a moment in preparation for the death-defying dive, then dropped dead center with a tiny pingg.
‘Man would be a fool to pay rent for a room where he’s like to catch his death by dew and damp,’ Luke sounded ready to sue. ‘Borrow me a half buck till Monday, Red?’
‘Ef ’n I had money I’d buy flour ’n shortenin’ for us to have a pan of poor-do gravy,’ Dove told him.
‘You like poor-do gravy, son?’
‘Mister, I like any kind gravy: red-eye gravy, pink-eye gravy, black-eye gravy, speckledly gravy and streakedy gravy, piedy gravy, calico gravy, brindle gravy, spotted gravy, white gravy ’n grease gravy,’ n skewball gravy. I can eat lavin’s ’n lashin’s of gravy. Ef ’n we had us flour ’n shortenin’ now I’d pour a little coffee in the pan too. Yes sir, I do like gravy.’
Luke slapped him cheerfully on the back. ‘Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag, son. Smile, darn you, smile. Laugh and the world laughs with you, Boy. Look at this – in six weeks we’ll both be rich!’
He was dangling some sort of purple-feathered rubber in front of Dove’s eyes. ‘Whatever is it, boy?’
‘Look like a little kid’s balloon but for the feather,’ Dove guessed and inspected the device more closely, ‘only it can’t be no balloon because it’s hollow and couldn’t hold no air. I’m sure I never saw nothin’ to compare, Luke.’
Luke waved it like a purple flag. ‘It’s a contraceptive, son! Combines protection with pleasure,’ he flicked the foolish-looking feather on its obscene tip, gave it a joyous swing and twist and flung away the certificates in his other hand. ‘No more knockin’ ourselves out rappin’ doors for two bits. A buck apiece boy! One buck apiece!’
Dove shook his head mournfully. ‘I wouldn’t have the common brass to knock on no lady’s door and show her one of them unnatural-lookin’ things, Luke.’ Dove told him, ‘I’d go plumb through the floor if she knew what it was – and if she didn’t know how could I sell it?’
Luke grew serious. ‘Distribution is my department, Red. But there’s room for a good man in plain condom mechanics. Later you advance to fancy work.’
‘How much do plain condom mechanics make?’ Dove asked with only mild interest.
‘Twenty cents a dozen – that would be about four dollars a day if you just take your own time, Red. And Gross buys your meals besides.’
‘Who’s Gross?’
‘Gross’ – Luke would have taken off his hat in reverence had he owned a hat – ‘Gross is the father of the O-Daddy.’
‘Never heard tell of that either,’ Dove admitted, ‘but four dollar a day is mighty good pay.’
Luke scribbled an address on a slip of paper, then recalled something and tore it up. ‘Ask a policeman,’ he suggested – ‘but never mention “Gross” to anything in uniform. Get it, boy?’
‘I get it, Luke. And I’m mightily grateful.’
‘Let a smile be your umbrella, Son. We’re finally around that corner. Business was never better. Weep and you weep alone.’
And left Dove to weep or laugh as he chose. ‘Always downhill and always merry,’ Dove thought as the little gin-head’s demented skip-and-hop step was lost in the brainless titter of the rain. And felt as if he’d not be hearing that foolish step in any weather again.
He never learned how the little man had come upon the address he handed Dove that day.
The room began to fill with a gray-green river light, the very color of sleep. Raindrips pinged faster into the pan. Dove slept with his head in his hands.
To dream of a room where buckets stood about to catch raindrops and men and women encircled a bed to watch a woman and a man. Above the girl’s head the gloom was smeared by light like a yellowing streak of shame and Dove saw she had one toenail painted green. And heard Fort’s voice toll and toll from some chapel below sleep – ‘Hasteth! Hasteth!’