“Where’s Slim? I’m going to bash that bastard’s brains to a raspberry pulp, may the Lord forgive me,” he said.
“He’s gone. He just left. Come on inside, quick. He’s coming back in a minute.”
When Jackson stepped into the room, Goldy followed.
There was a battered white-painted iron double bed against one wall, with the covers turned back, exposing dirty stained sheets and two pillows with slimy gray circles from hair grease. Against the other wall was an overstuffed sofa with the heads of two springs poking from the rotten faded green seat-covering. At the back a rusty potbellied stove squatted on a square of rusty tin. To one side was a wooden box serving as a coalbin, to the other a doorway leading into the kitchen. A round table with a knife-scarred top and a three-legged straight-backed chair commanded the center of the bare wooden floor. The room was filled to the brim. When the three people entered, it overflowed.
“What’s she doing here?” Imabelle asked, throwing a startled look at Goldy.
“He’s my brother. He’s come to help me get you away.”
She looked at the big .45 in Goldy’s hand. Her eyes stretched and her lips twitched. But she didn’t look surprised.
“You-all has sure come leaded for bear.”
“Can’t come as boys to do a man’s job,” Goldy said.
She peered at Goldy.
“He sure looks like that Sister me and Slim rode with.”
“I is.” Goldy grinned, showing his two gold teeth. “That’s how I found out where you is at. I trailed you.”
“Well, how ’bout that! Impersonating a nun. Everybody got their racket, ain’t they?”
Goldy saw the trunk first. It was at the end of the sofa, hidden from Jackson’s view by the table.
“What they been doing to you, honey?” Jackson asked anxiously.
Suddenly Imabelle got into a lather of haste.
“Daddy, we ain’t got time to talk. Slim has gone after Hank and Jodie. They’re coming back to take my gold ore. You got to save my gold ore, Daddy.”
“What else am I here for, honey? Just tell me where it’s at.”
He was looking through the doorway into the kitchen. The only clean thing in that flat was the kitchen floor. It was still wet from a recent scrubbing.
“It ain’t in there,” Goldy said, pointing toward the trunk.
“Daddy, is I glad you come!” Imabelle repeated in a loud voice, and went around the table to get her pocket-book from beneath a pillow.
“Don’t you worry, I’ll save your gold, honey. I brought the hearse.”
“The hearse! Mr. Clay’s hearse?”
She went to the front window and peeked through the drawn shades. When she turned back she was giggling.
“Well, how ’bout that!”
“Only thing we could get to move it with,” Jackson said defensively.
“Let’s just take it and go, Daddy. I’ll tell you everything on the way.”
“Those bastards haven’t hurt you, have they?”
“No, Daddy, but we ain’t got time to talk about it now. We got to think of some place to hide the trunk at. They’ll be looking for it everywhere.”
“We can’t take it home,” Jackson said. “The landlady has put us out.”
“We’ll keep it in my room,” Goldy said. “I got a room where nobody can find it. Bruzz’ll tell you. It’ll be safe there, won’t it, Bruzz?”
“I’ll think of some place,” Jackson said evasively.
He had no intention of letting Goldy get his hands on that trunk full of gold ore.
“What’s the matter with my place?”
“We ain’t got no time to argue,” Imabelle said. “Slim’ll be back any minute with Hank and Jodie.”
“Ain’t no argument,” Goldy argued. “I has already got the best place.”
“We’ll check it at the station,” Imabelle said as the thought struck her. “But for God’s sake hurry up. We ain’t got no time to lose.”
Jackson stuck his pipe underneath his arm and circled the table to get to the trunk.
Goldy stuck his big .45 inside of his rusty black gown and gave Jackson a regretful look.
“The older you gets the more squared you becomes, Bruzz,” he said sorrowfully.
Imabelle looked from one to another and came to a sudden decision. “Take it to your brother’s place, Daddy. It’ll be safe there.”
Goldy and Imabelle exchanged glances.
“I’ll wait for you-all in the hearse,” she said.
“We’re coming right after you,” Jackson said, hoisting his end of the trunk.
Goldy hoisted the other end. They staggered beneath its weight, squeezed between the table and sofa, pushing the table aside, angled it through the narrow doorway.
They heard Imabelle’s high heels tapping quickly down the wooden stairs.
“You go first,” Goldy said.
Jackson turned his back to the trunk, took the bottom corners in each hand, let the weight rest on his back, led down the steep stairs, his legs buckling at every step.
He had sweated through the back of his coat by the time they came out onto the sidewalk. Sweat was running into his eyes, blinding him. He felt his way across the sidewalk to the back of the hearse, balanced the trunk with one hand, opened the double-doors with the other, moved some of the junk out of the way, and hoisted his end onto the coffin rack. Then he got back and helped Goldy push the trunk inside.
The trunk sat between the two side windows in clear view, like a sawed-off casket fitted to a legless man.
Jackson closed the doors and went around one side of the hearse to the driver’s seat. Goldy went around the other. They looked at each other across the empty seat.
“Where’d she go?” Jackson asked.
“How the hell do I know where she went? She’s your woman, she ain’t mine.”
Jackson peered up and down the dismal street. Far down on the other side, almost to the station, he saw some people running. It didn’t attract his attention. Somebody was always running in Harlem.
“She must be somewheres.”
Goldy climbed into the front seat, trying to be patient.
“Leave us take the trunk on home and come back for her.”
“I can’t leave her here. You know that. It was her I came after in the first place.”
Goldy began losing his patience. “Man, let’s go. That woman can find her way.”
“You leave me to run my own business,” Jackson said, starting back into the tenement.
“She’s not in the house, God damn it. Are you going to be a square all your life? She’s gone.”
“If she’s gone I’m going to wait right here until she comes back.”
Goldy was fingering the handle of his revolver as he struggled to control his fury.
“Man, all that bitch wants is to save her gold. She’s going to find you. She don’t care nothing ’bout nobody.”
“I’m getting good and sick and tired of you talking about her like that,” Jackson flared, approaching Goldy belligerently.
Goldy drew his revolver halfway out. It was all he could do to stop himself.
“God damn, you black son of a bitch, if you wasn’t my brother I’d kill you,” he said, twitching all over in a doped rage.
Jackson took a new grip on his length of iron pipe, crossed the sidewalk, climbed the tenement stairs back to the flat.
“Imabelle. You here, Imabelle?”
He searched the apartment, looking underneath the bed, behind the sofa, in the kitchen, holding the club gripped firmly in his hand, as though he were searching for someone as small as a puppy dog and dangerous as a male gorilla.
A corner of the kitchen was closed off with a faded green cotton curtain suspended from a line of sagging twine. Jackson pulled the curtain aside and looked inside.
“She left all her clothes,” he said aloud.
Suddenly he felt beat, tired to the bone.