“Mere inches apart.”
“Flat out luck.”
Winston worked a kink out of his shoulder. “Could be that I got them stuck to my sack or sleeve or something when I went to do my laundry and they fell off outside.”
The presence of even a lame explanation seemed to relax Jubal. He worked his bite. “Sun must have warped them a little.”
“Sorry.”
The older man waved it off. “Just glad to have ’em back. They’ll mold back. Besides, if I’d choked to death …” He stopped. “What do you say we grab some chow and shoot some pool?”
“Okay.”
It was ten o’clock in the morning, but late enough for burgers. Winston had a mug of milk with his food and talked a frowning Jubal into the same. They ate and shot a game and watched a boring baseball game on the set behind the bar. Every bite seemed an exercise for Jubal and Winston began to worry that the bum had damaged the dentures. He wondered if he needed to say something.
“Hey there, girls,” Lucius Carter called to them.
Jubal had made up his mind to ignore the man. He went off to the rest room.
Lucius came to the table with a big ugly smile on his face.
Winston looked at him. “Funny stunt with a man’s teeth.”
Lucius laughed and looked at the two half-eaten burgers. “No harm done. He found ’em, didn’t he?”
“Found them?” Winston felt hollow and a bit sick. “I wasn’t there when he found them. Where were they?”
Lucius looked at Winston with a crooked smile. “Don’t recall now.”
“That sort of shit make you feel like a big man?” Winston was on the prod.
“Like I said, no harm done.”
Winston slammed his cue stick down on the table. “Get the hell outta here!” His hand buzzed, he wanted to raise the stick high, but instead he let go.
The bartender called over, “No trouble.”
“Out, Carter.”
Lucius raised his hands. “Fine.” He looked over at the bartender. “No trouble.” He turned to Winston, smiled again and said, “Life’s hard, but then the pay is low.”
When Jubal came back out, Lucius was gone. “Where’s the dung bank?”
“He left.”
Jubal sat down behind his burger and rubbed his temples.
“How do your teeth feel?”
“Feel okay.” Jubal looked at Winston. “What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“How come you ain’t eatin’?” Jubal asked. “I’m not too hungry.”
They left the tavern and got into Winston’s truck. The sun was just past straight up and beating down on the cab. Winston looked before pulling out into the traffic.
“What do you think makes a fella end up like Lucius?” Winston asked.
“You mean, what makes him act the way he does?”
“Yeah.” Winston switched on the radio.
“Too much sun,” Jubal said. “Hell, I don’t know. He must have been drowned at birth.”
“Yeah, well.”
“He sure hates you,” Jubal said.
“Yep.”
Jubal was looking at Winston. “He hates you ‘cause you’re colored.”
“Black.”
“Whatever. But that’s why he hates you. Don’t make no sense to me. You can’t help what you are.”
Winston looked at the man. “I don’t need to help it.”
“Whatever.”
“How do you feel about the fact that I’m black?” Winston felt stupid asking the question.
“Don’t make me no never mind. You could be purple for all I fuckin’ care. Why all the questions?”
“I don’t know.”
They didn’t say much during the rest of the drive. Winston watched the road and Jubal gazed out the window at the landscape. As they rolled to a stop near the bunkhouse, Winston said, “You know I don’t mind that you’re white, Jubal.”
“Glad to hear it.” Jubal paused before opening his door. “What made you think to say that?”
“Just lookin’ at you,” Winston said.
Big Picture
Michael walked out and down toward Massachusetts Avenue, hearing the horns of the traffic, smelling the exhaust, remembering how once he was passed up four times in the rain in D.C. by cabbies who wouldn’t stop for a black man. The clincher was that two of the drivers had been black as well. It was a Thursday, the night of Washington’s so-called “gallery walk”—“so-called” because, although some of the galleries in Adams-Morgan and Georgetown were within walking distance from one another, most were scattered all over the place, near Dupont Circle, well up Connecticut and downtown. Michael didn’t really want to be there; he wasn’t sure why he maintained a relationship with the small gallery. Washington was not terribly important in the art world, but the owner had been an early supporter of his. The owner was a flamboyantly gay man who had sold the occasional painting when Michael was starving and really needed a sale. Now, sales were common, and welcome, but the news of them did little to move Michael beyond the sense of loss he felt knowing the paintings were gone. Joshua, the gallery owner, had talked Michael into the show, telling him that Santa Fe, Los Angeles, and New York were not the only places where art happened.
“Where do you live, my lovely Michael?” Joshua had asked over the phone. “Do you live in Los Angeles, my sweet? No, you don’t. Have you become so jaded and mainstream and, how shall I put it, American?”
It was the last word that had gotten under Michael’s skin. Now the wonderful irony was that to prove to himself that he hadn’t succumbed to some simple American idiocy about the location of art, he was having a show he didn’t need in the nation’s capital.
“Michael, oh, Michael,” Joshua called, leaning out of the doorway of the gallery.
Michael turned and looked at him.
Joshua waved frantically for him to come back. “I need you!” he called.
Michael walked slowly back to him, wondering where Karen was. He last saw her talking and laughing with a woman from the Post. She liked these things more than he did.
When Michael was close, Joshua said softly, excitedly, “I think I’ve sold the big one.”
A pain shot through Michael’s head like a ricocheting bullet as he considered the six-by-eight-foot canvas that he had thought about withholding from the show. He had included it because of the strength of the work, believing that no one would buy it. “People aren’t buying big anymore,” Joshua had complained, hearing about the piece. It was also priced at a whopping thirty thousand dollars, more than twice as much as any of his other canvases in Santa Fe, Los Angeles, or New York.
“The big one?” Michael said.
“Can you believe it?” Joshua pulled him by the arm into the gallery, squeezing his bicep happily, lovingly. He led Michael to the canvas, in front of which stood about fifteen people.
Karen came over, kissed Michael’s cheek, and wrapped herself about his other arm. Michael looked at her illuminated face, and found her way too happy. Karen had been his wife for less than a year; she was so young, innocent, as unblemished as her skin. He knew it was not the money that was exciting her, rather the electricity of everything, the people buzzing like shiny-eyed bees. She was guiltless, after all, but still it was disconcerting, agitating even, to see her as animated as she was, staring at the man in the double-breasted suit who stood so conspicuously before everyone, admiring the painting.
Michael took an instant dislike to the man, seeing his high-flown clothes as symptom, his exaggeratedly relaxed posture as contrivance.
“Douglass Dheaper,” the double-breasted man said, reaching to shake Michael’s hand. Upon taking it, he gave it a gentle, but imperious squeeze. “You are a genius,” he said, turning back to admire the painting. “It’s so daring, so reckless, impertinent even. Wouldn’t you say so, Laura?” he said to the woman beside him who nodded her painted face. “Laura agrees.”