The chalk was being worn down to a stump as cartoon eyes were added, and more wheels were drawn, and Crosshatch squares were carefully colored in. The production was a couple of yards wide now.
Kootie shivered. It was cold out here, and he didn’t like having his arm stretched out for so long. “Will you be done when that stick of chalk is used up?” he asked hopefully. There had been two sticks of the chalk in the yellow-and-orange box, and he hoped Edison wasn’t going to need the other one as well.
He was about to repeat his question when Edison spoke instead: “What? What is it now?”
“How much of that stuff have you got to draw?”
“Stuff…” Kootie’s head was swung this way and that, and he had the impression that Edison was even more bewildered than he was by the convoluted designs he’d drawn on the sidewalk.
“Did I—” Edison began. He took a deep breath. “Yes. There. That’ll stop any ghosts or ghost hunters who might pick up my trail.”
As Kootie presumed to straighten up, he could feel his recent memories being ransacked. “And,” Edison went on, “it might slow down your… one-armed murderer. Now—how much does a dinner cost around here? Oaffg—Never mind, what I meant was, let’s find some place to eat.” Kootie’s head tilted to look down, and again their gaze swept the lunatic drawing. “After that we can come back here and—see if we’ve caught something to put in your film canister.”
Only now did Kootie realize that his purchases at the ninety-nine-cent store might not have been has own idea; and he wondered why Edison apparently wanted to catch a ghost. But the notion of dinner was compelling.
“I’ve been smelling barbecue for a while,’” he ventured.
“Good lad, I’m not getting anything…olfactory, myself. Lead the way, by all means—it’s never a good idea to turn your back on your nose.”
The thrilling blend of onion and peppers and lemon on the breeze seemed to carry at least the promise of warmth, and Kootie was briskly rubbing his arms above the elbows as he followed the smells across the Park View intersection and around a corner, to a doorway under a red neon sign that read JUMBO’S BURGOO & MOP TROTTER. Even from out on the street Kootie could hear laughter and raised voices from within.
“It’s food,” Edison assured him. “Southern stuff.”
(Again Kootie got a memory flash—Spanish moss hanging from old live oaks along the banks of the Caloosahatchee as he chugged upriver in an old sloop, the winter house in Fort Myers among the towering bamboo and tropical fruit trees, cornmeal-dipped fried catfish served alongside corn on the cob that had crinkly hairpins stuck in the ends for handles…)
“And without any sense of smell I won’t be able to taste any of it,” Edison went on in an aggrieved voice as Kootie pulled open the screen door and stepped into the place. “I’d much rather have stayed deaf instead.”
Redwood picnic tables were lined up on the flagstone floor, with a counter along one side of the room—ORDER at the near end, PICKUP at the other—and in the kitchen beyond that, Kootie could just see the tops of big shiny steel ovens. Framed hand-painted menus swung in the hot air above the counter, and the other three walls, dark old brickwork, were crowded with black-and-white photos that all seemed to be autographed. The cooks and the countermen and all the men and women and children at the tables were black, but for the first time since losing Raffle and Fred, Kootie didn’t feel like an excluded tugitive.
“What can we do for you, little mon?” rumbled a voice above Kootie’s head. Looking up, he saw the broad, red-eyed face of a counterman staring down at him.
“I’m going to have—” began Kootie, from habit wondering what sort of pulses and grains and vegetables they might serve here; then he finished defiantly, “meat!”
“Meat you shall have,” the man said agreeably, nodding. “Of what subcategory and method of preparation?”
“Barbecue pork ribs,” said Edison while Kootie was still trying to read the menu through the dark lenses of his sunglasses, “and the turnip and mustard greens with bacon dumplings—” (“Please,” interjected Kootie breathlessly, just to be polite.) “And a big mug of beer—” (“N-n-no,” Kootie managed to interrupt, “I’m too young, I’ll just have a large Coke!”) “And,” Edison went on—(“Not” said Kootie, who could see what was coming)—a cigar,” finished Edison in defeat, “dammit.”
The black man was frowning and nodding. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Nothing wrong with you.” He was tapping keys on the cash register, which hummed and spat out a receipt. “Seven dollars and a quarter, that comes to.”
Kootie gave the man a ten-dollar bill, keeping his mouth and throat firmly closed against Edison’s outraged grunting.
The man gave him his change. “It’ll be at the far end of the counter there, in just a minute. Do you think you can keep the number twenty-two in mind? Can you remember it even now?”
“Twenty-two,” said Kootie. “Sure. Why?”
“Because that’s the number that one of us up here will call, when your supper is ready for you to pick up. I can’t see why that shouldn’t be satisfactory to everybody concerned, can you?”
“No, sir,” said Kootie. He limped to a table that was occupied only at one end by a couple of old men playing dominoes, and he wondered if he might ever get used to everyone thinking that he was crazy; then he wondered what schemes Edison might come up with for finding a place to sleep tonight, and to make money tomorrow. Remembering the chalk drawing, he hoped the old man’s ghost wasn’t going senile.
When his number was called and he went up to get his tray, his gaze was caught by a polished wooden box on the counter. A metal rod, hinged at the bottom, ran up the front of it, and a piece of paper had been taped to the rod, with L.A. CIGAR—TOO TRAGICAL hand-lettered vertically on the paper. On the counter in front of the box was a cardboard bowl of peppermints.
Kootie’s gaze was snagged on the lettering. He read it downward, and then upward, and it was the same letters either way. This seemed important, this proof that moving backward could be the same as forward, that the last letter of a sentence could be not only identical to the lead-off capital letter but the very same thing….
He realized that he had been standing here, holding the tray with the steaming plates on it and staring at the vertical words, for at least several seconds. He made himself look away and breathe deeply. “What,” he whispered, “is it?”
“That’s a cigar lighter,” rumbled his throat as he crossed to his table and sat back down. “Well,” he answered, “you didn’t get a cigar, so forget about it.”
Kootie made both of them focus on the food.
The ribs were drenched in a hot sauce that reeked of tomato and onion and cider vinegar, and he gnawed every shred of meat off the bones and was glad of the napkin dispenser on the table. The greens only got nibbled, because Edison couldn’t taste them and Kootie found them strong and rank, but he did eat most of the dumplings.
A mouthful of Coke ran down his chin onto his shirt when Edison opened his mouth to whisper, “My God, it’s fly paper!”
Then Kootie watched his hands untuck his shirt to get at the bag and pull out of it the box of film. The film cartridge itself was dumped out onto the table, and Kootie’s fingers snatched up the empty black plastic canister. Kootie was about to point out that the film was in the yellow metal thing, but Edison hissed, “That fella’s going to light a cigarette!” Sure enough, one of the old men at the table had taken out of his pocket a pack of Kools and was shaking one out.