Margie’s husband hadn’t come home from work. She looked like Imabelle, only more proper. She was straightening her hair when Jackson arrived and had a mean yellow look at being disturbed. The house smelled like a singed pig.
“Is Imabelle here?” Jackson asked wiping the sweat from his head and face and pulling down the crotch of his pants.
“No, she is not. Why did not you telephone?”
“I didn’t know y’all had a telephone. When’d y’all get it?”
“Yesterday.”
“I ain’t seen you since yesterday.”
“No, you have not, have you?”
She went back to the kitchen where her hair irons were on the fire. Jackson followed her, keeping his overcoat on.
“You know where she might be?”
“Do I know where who might be?”
“Imabelle?”
“Oh, her? How do I know if you do not know? You are the one who is keeping her.”
“Know where I can find Jodie, then?”
“Jodie? And who might Jodie be?”
“I don’t know his last name. He’s the man who told you and Imabelle about the man who raises money.”
“Raises money for what?”
Jackson was getting mad. “Raises it to spend, that’s for what. He raises dollar-bills into ten-dollar bills and ten-dollar bills into hundred-dollar bills.”
She turned around from the stove and looked at Jackson.
“Is you drunk? If you is, I want you to get out of here and do not come back until you is sober.”
“I ain’t drunk. You sound more drunk than me. She met the man right here in your house.”
“In my house? A man who raises ten-dollar bills into hundred-dollar bills? If you are not drunk, you is crazy. If I had met that man, he would still be here, chained to the floor, working his ass off every day.”
“I ain’t in no mood for joking.”
“Do you think I am joking?”
“I mean the other one — Jodie. The one who knew the man who raises the money.”
Margie picked up the straightening iron and began to run it through her kinky reddish hair. Smoke rose from the frying locks and a sound was heard like chops sizzling.
“God damn it, you have done made me burn my hair!” she raved.
“I’m sorry, but this is important.”
“You mean my hair ain’t important?”
“No, I don’t mean that. I mean I got to find her.”
She brandished the hot hair-iron like a club.
“Jackson, will you please take your ass away from here and let me alone? If Ima told you she met somebody in my house called Jodie, she is just lying. And if you do not know by this time that she is a lying bitch, you is a fool.”
“That ain’t no way to talk about your sister. I don’t thank you for that one little bit.”
“Who asked you to come here bothering me, anyway?” she shouted.
Jackson put on his hat and left in a huff. He began to feel cornered and panicky. He had to get his money raised before morning or he was jailhouse-bound. and he didn’t know where else to look for Imabelle. He had met her at the Undertaker’s Annual Dance in the Savoy Ballroom the year before. She’d been doing day work for the white folks downtown and didn’t have a steady boyfriend. He’d started taking her out, but that had gotten to be so expensive she’d started living with him.
They didn’t have any close friends. There was nowhere she could hide. She didn’t like to get chummy with folks and didn’t want anybody to know too much about her. He hardly knew anything about her himself. Just that she’d come from the South somewhere.
But he’d bet his life that she was true to him. Only she was scared of something and he didn’t know what. That was what had him worried. She might have gotten so scared of the marshal she’d disappear for two or three days. He could telephone her white folks the next day to see if she’d shown up for work. But that would be too late. He needed her right then to get in touch with Hank to have his money raised, or they were both going to be in trouble.
He stopped in a drugstore and telephoned his landlady. But he put his handkerchief over the mouthpiece to disguise his voice.
“Is Imabelle Jackson there, ma’am?”
“I know who you is, Jackson. You ain’t fooling me,” his landlady yelled into the phone.
“Ain’t nobody trying to fool you lady. I just asked you if Imabelle Jackson was there.”
“No, she ain’t, Jackson, and if she was here she’d be in jail by now where you is going to be as soon as the police get hold of you. Busting up my brand-new stove and messing up my house and stealing money from your boss put aside to bury the dead, and the Lawd knows what else, trying to make out like you is somebody else when you telephone here, figuring I ain’t gonna know your voice much as I done heard it asking me to leave you pay me the next week. Bringing that yallah woman into my house and breaking it up, good as I done been to you.”
“I ain’t trying to hide my voice. I’m just in a little trouble, that’s all.”
“You tellin’ me! You is in more trouble than you knows.”
“I’m going to pay you for the stove.”
“If you don’t I’m goin’ to put you underneath the jail.”
“You don’t have to worry about that. I’m going to pay you first thing tomorrow.”
“I go to work tomorrow.”
“I’ll pay you first thing when you come home from work.”
“If you ain’t in jail by then. What’d you steal from Mr. Clay?”
“I ain’t stole nothing from nobody. What I wanted to ask was if Imabelle comes home you tell her to get in touch with Hank—”
“If she comes here tonight, her or you either, and don’t bring a hundred and fifty-seven dollars and ninety-five cents to pay for my stove, she ain’t goin’ to have no chance to get in touch with nobody, unless it be the judge she goin’ to meet tomorrow morning.”
“You call yourself a Christian,” Jackson said angrily. “Here we are in trouble and—”
“Who’s any worse Christian than you!” she shouted. “A thief and a liar! Living in sin! Busting my stove! Robbin’ the dead! The Lawd don’t even know you, I tell you that!”
She banged down the receiver so hard it stung Jackson’s ears.
He left the booth, wiping the sweat from his round, shiny black face and head.
“Calls herself a Christian,” he muttered to himself. “Couldn’t be more of a devil if she had two horns.”
He stood on the corner bareheaded, cooling his brain. There was nothing left now but to pray. He hailed a taxi, rode back to his minister’s house on 139th Street in Sugar Hill.
Reverend Gaines was a big black man with a mighty voice, deeply religious. He believed in a fire-and-brimstone hell and had no sympathy for sinners whom he couldn’t convert. If they didn’t want to reform, accept the Lord, join the church, and live righteously, then burn them in hell. No two ways about it. A man couldn’t be a Christian on Sunday and sin six days a week. Such a man must take God for a fool.
He was writing his sermon when Jackson arrived. But he put it aside for a good church-member.
“Welcome, Brother Jackson. What brings you to the house of the shepherd of the Lord?”
“I’m in trouble, Reverend.”
Reverend Gaines fingered the satin lapel of his blue flannel smoking-jacket. The diamond on his third finger sparkled in the light.
“Woman?” he asked softly.
“No, sir. My woman’s true. We’re going to get married as soon as she gets her divorce.”
“Don’t wait too long, Brother. Adultery is a mortal sin.”
“We can’t do anything until she finds her husband.”
“Money?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you stolen some money, Brother Jackson?”