‘To hear that looney holler,’ Reba shuddered after things had quieted down a bit, ‘you’d think all they did in them hills was bury their dead.’
‘Let us not begrudge the child,’ Mama reproved Reba, ‘she got the innocence God protects.’
While God protected her innocence, Finnerty figured her finances. He supplied her clothes, her meals, her amusements and what in all seriousness he called her education. The grift on joint-togs, such as parade panties, ran to a hundred percent and higher.
Small wonder He had forgotten entirely about the escapee from O-Daddyland.
The escapee came down Perdido Street with a sample case in his hand. He wasn’t offering coffee pots nor finger waves any more. Now He was the Watkins Man.
Of course being a Watkins Man in 1931 wasn’t what it had been before the wilderness had been pushed back. Then it had been something more than a matter of taking orders for lotions and salves. The Watkins Man had once been the bringer of news of the world outside to the Louisiana back-brush; and he’d been more than a news bearer. He could tell the farmer what ailed his horse and could cure the brute as well. More than a horse doctor, he had cured people too. He could preach the Word, act as midwife, and recite Evangeline.
In Dove Linkhorn, unhappily, these arts had declined. Indeed, they had vanished altogether. And by his clothes one had to wonder whether this particular Watkins Man might not even have the notion that his true trade was lovemaking rather than salesmanship.
Dove had spent every last cent of his O-Daddy gold on a suit of O-Daddy clothes. It was tropical white, over a shirt with narrow pink stripes. His hat had a yellow feather that matched his shoes of yellow suede. He had come a long way, that was plain to be seen, from the boy who had come to town barefoot in blue jeans.
As he came down the street for whom nobody prays, in the evening hour.
It was that slander-colored evening hour before the true traffic begins, when once again sheets have been changed, again Lifebuoy and permanganate have been rationed; and once again for blocks about, pouting or powdering or dusting their navels, each girl wonders idly what manner of man – mutt, mouse, or moose – the oncoming night will bring her.
Perdido Street, in the steaming heat, felt like a basement valet shop with both irons working. The girls in the crib doors plucked at their blouses to peel them off their breasts. In the round of their armpits sweat crept in the down. Sweat molded their pajamas to their thighs. The whole street felt molded, pit to thigh. It was even too hot to solicit. For normal men don’t so much as glance at the girls in heat like that lest the watery navels stick.
Yet the very heat that enervates men infects women with restlessness and the city was full of lonesome monsters. Side-street solitaries who couldn’t get drunk, seeking to lose their loneliness without sacrificing their solitude. Dull boys whose whole joy expired in one piggish grunt. Anything could happen to a woman available to anyone. Boredom of their beds and terror of their street divided each.
They had died of uselessness one by one, yet lived on behind veritable prairie fires of wishes, hoping for something to happen that had never happened before: the siren screaming toward the crossing smashup, the gasp of the man with the knife in his side, the suicide leap for no reason at all. Yet behind such fires sat working cross words while prying salt-water taffy from between their teeth: passion and boredom divided each.
In Spider-Boy Court the blinds, drawn low, left the room in a dappled gloom where dimly fell the shadows, darker yet, of bars. For little windows lined the side that paralleled Perdido Street. And a ceiling fan, cutting the restless light, caused shadows to tremble along wall and floor.
In this moted dusk a juke played on and so long as it played the women sat content. But the moment the music stopped, a creaking, regular and slow, began right overhead and they began shifting uneasily from divan to doorway and back to the divans, opening another coke or lighting a fresh cigarette at each new post – they never finished anything.
Dissatisfaction was a disease with them. Reba was sure the fan was giving her a chill, Floralee needed something to warm her up, Frenchy wanted someone to tell her why she couldn’t spike a coke with gin and Kitty said she was simply suffocating.
Wherever they powdered, wherever they paced, envy and ennui divided each.
‘A light drizzle would be good for trade,’ Mama took a guess, ‘but a heavy fall would ruin it.’ At that moment a cab honked from the curb.
Though someone was always watching the street, no one had seen it drive up. A cab that appeared out of nowhere, like a cab in a misting dream. Mama simply scuttled to the curb and the girls crowded forward in their watery gloom, shading their eyes against the street.
And saw step forth in the greenish light a naval lieutenant in full regalia, a sea-going executive in rimless glasses, a hero of sea fights yet unfought. Bearing like a rainbow across his sky-blue breast all the ribboned honors a peacetime navy could pin. From the gold-braided cap to the gold-braid sleeves, there were not many such sights above deck in 1931. Mama had never captured a sight so glorious just to behold.
Yet the sight seemed reluctant of capture. He held Mama in some earnest discussion speaking low to keep his driver from hearing.
‘Mammy-freak,’ Mama thought she heard him say, ‘stick out so fah behind she hahdly got time make a child behave.’
Mama stepped closer. ‘I don’t quite catch what you’re saying, officer.’ He leaned toward her cupping his lips – ‘Made a lemon pie. Me a little pie. What do you know? A little lemon pie all my own.’
Mama took one step back. ‘Lemon? All your own?’
‘The very day after I broke the churn.’
‘Then I have just the girl for you,’ Mama decided. For whatever the rascal had in mind she couldn’t afford to lose any prospect so prosperous. ‘Every man likes a little change now and then. I know exactly how you feel.’
He drew himself up. ‘Nobody knows how a mammy-freak feels,’ he informed her point blank. ‘How could anyone but another mammy-freak know how a mammy-freak feels?’
If it was an organization he was the president. Mama simply turned to go but he held her back with a wheedling touch. ‘You know yourself,’ he cajoled her, ‘how they stick out in back.’
‘Who stick out in back?’
‘Why, all of them, when they get in a hurry. Now admit it.’
Mama shook off his hand. ‘Who stick out? Who get in a hurry? Admit what?’ Mama was getting angry but she didn’t know at what.
‘Why, old black mammies of course,’ he told her as though everyone knew old black mammies were the coming thing.
‘Maybe you ought to come inside before it rains,’ Mama invited him, feeling they’d both be safer in the parlor.
‘It isn’t going to rain,’ Navy sounded certain as God, and began unfolding a little apron from under his coat. He bowed to tie it about her waist. It was striped green and white like peppermint and as he tied it Mama wondered how she had become the prospect. Her fingers plucked without strength at the apron’s price tag. He picked the tag off himself and the cab dusted off in disgust.
‘A good many black mammy-freaks visit you I presume?’ he presumed confidently.
‘It’s been several days since one called,’ Mama played it straight, ‘and he didn’t leave his name. Would you care to offer yours?’
‘My men call me Commander,’ he informed her stiffly.
‘That,’ Mama thought, ‘isn’t what my chicks will call you.’ And led him inside like leading him home.