"Georgetown, huh? That's a tough school. I go to Westridge myself."
"I've heard that's a good school. Pretty long drive, isn't it?"
"I live up here, so it's cheaper than moving down to Barkersville or staying in a dorm."
"What do you study?" James took another sip from his heavy mug of beer.
"I’m a psych major."
James nodded. Psychology, huh? She might have all kinds of games going on. Maybe this is some kind of black-white social experiment.
"I'm in library sciences myself,” he said, licking the beer foam from his upper lip. “Used to work at the Smithsonian."
"Wow. That's a really cool place. I went there on a class trip a few years back. If you don't mind me asking," she said, rolling her blue eyes to indicate the town outside, "What brought you to Windshake? I mean, it's not exactly a happening place."
"My aunt lives here. I'm keeping her company until her health improves." Or until she dies, whichever comes first.
"Isn't that sweet?" the redhead said, smiling again. "I've seen you around town. I mean, it's not like you don't stand out or anything."
James dipped his head and waited. We don't like darkies ‘round these parts. Spooks belong in the graveyard. Coons are fer huntin’.
"I thought you'd be an interesting person to talk to," she said.
What kind of a lily-white liberal was she? Takin' pity on the po' old suppressed African-American. That's NIGGER to you, ma'am. James stared into his beer at the salamander eyes of foam.
"Well, am I right?" she said.
"I'm just a regular guy." James shrugged, and let his shrug continue into a hunch, as if he could duck his head into his shirt like a turtle.
The redhead moved to the stool next to his. James felt the white eyes crawl out of the rough-cut woodwork. Fuck them, James decided. It isn't against the law for me to talk, even to a local white girl.
"My name's Sarah. What's yours?"
"James."
"Look, I'm not on the make or anything. I like to dance. And I get tired of the same old guys around here. All they want to talk about is bow hunting and tractor pulls and big tires."
At last James smiled, a slightly beery grin that was warm and relaxed. And he had to admit it felt damn good. He hadn't smiled in a coon's age, to coin a local phrase. “At least you're up-front. Can I buy you a beer?"
"I'm underage, plus my Daddy's a Baptist preacher. He doesn't even approve of me dancing. But thanks, anyway."
Holy hell. He was messing around with a preacher's daughter? He could practically hear the gasoline splashing onto the wooden crosses.
Still, she was pretty cute. Her company was worth a little risk.
They talked and watched the game and James learned that Sarah wanted to move to Oregon after graduation. And though she had been raised a Baptist, she had started hanging around with a Ba'hai group on campus and thought they had some good ideas.
World unity and all that. Brotherhood of man. Sisterhood of woman. Peoplehood of people. Sounded pretty hip to James.
But then she asked him to dance.
James looked at the stage at the far end of the converted barn. Hay bales propped up the amplifiers and Big Willie was twanging on a jaw harp. A fat boy who looked like that old Shoney's restaurant statue was thumping a stand-up bass, and the other Half-Watts were sawing on fiddles and plucking banjoes. A group of middle-aged cowboys and cowgirls were galloping around in a square dance, hoeing on down like there was no tomorrow.
He could dance with a white girl. Sure, and he could even do that "change-yer-partner" bit and get belly to belly with a buckskinned belle. But he was positive the next dance would be a dozen white men doing the Tennessee Two-Step across his hide.
"No, thank you,” he said. “Contrary to stereotype, not all blacks are good dancers."
The corners of her mouth sagged in disappointment. She talked a few minutes more and then mumbled that she had classes tomorrow and better be getting home. He watched her leave, and the tension died in the bar as if the power had been cut.
James had been so nervous talking to Sarah that he couldn't resist that extra beer. So there was no way in hell he was going to slide behind the seat of his Accord and drive through the tight streets of Windshake, where white cops blossomed like popcorn whenever James was at the wheel. Nothing to do but hoof it the ten blocks home.
He didn’t like walking the streets of Windshake at night. His fuzzy brain conjured voices from stale old radio dramas.
Who knew what evil lurked in the brick alleys and shadows of Windshake? Probably redneck evil. Yokel vampires with buck fangs and Oshkoshbegosh overalls.
He walked with his head down, not that there were many white eyes to avoid at this hour. He passed Luther's Hardware, glancing into the window at the wheelbarrows and birdhouses, and noticed that there was a special on snow shovels. Then he turned the corner onto the darkened back street. It looked kind of spooky at night, with the ragged awnings hanging over like big hands and the fence-top shadows resembling black teeth. Broken glass glittered under the streetlight like tiny hungry eyes in a dark forest. A loose piece of guttering flapped in the night breeze.
He wished he had talked to Sarah longer. She was really nice, and gorgeous to boot. He wasn't sure how he felt about interracial dating, though it might be time to find out. But maybe she was just being kind. She hadn't given him a phone number or anything to indicate any real interest. The summery aroma of her perfume wisped across his nostrils in memory, but the back street odors of rotten asphalt and spilled kerosene drove it away.
James climbed onto the abandoned railroad track and headed home. He stretched his legs to keep rhythm to the spacing of the creosote timbers that passed under his feet. Then he tried to walk on the rail, but his coordination was too impaired. He was passing the rusty, corrugated water tower when he heard a sound in the dark gridwork underneath it.
Stray mutt? James took a step, his sneaker sending a chunk of gravel skipping down the tracks. The noise came again, louder. A rasping, wheezing sound.
He wouldn't look. He told himself to keep the old head down, submissive-like.
Somebody stepped out of the shadows. At first, James thought it might be one of the rednecks from the Hayloft Tavern, come to share a little two-fisted Southern hospitality with him.
But whoever it was staggered like a bum on a sterno binge. Only, Windshake didn't have any homeless that he'd ever seen.
James aimed his foot for the next cross tie, but came up short because his eyes had shifted toward the person in the shadows. He stumbled and nearly fell down the gravel bank. One of his feet had lodged under a track coupling.
Fucker's got one of those glo-tubes, like they sell in the dime stores at Halloween. No, TWO of them.
The person wobbled out of the shadows.
A good Southern boy, all right. Regulation-wear Levi's and ball cap. And he's coming this way.
Only his goddamned legs aren't moving.
The man oozed into the streetlight, and James saw that the glo-tubes were eyes stuck inside the lump on the man's shoulder's. Only now he could see that it definitely wasn't a man.
Glistening ropes clung to the thing like poison sumac, slick and fuzzy. The thing moved like a slug, the lower part of it leaving a trail of mucus. The tall weeds wilted under its passage.
The wheezing sound was coming from the thing's shoulder-lump. A gummy flap opened, and James looked with fascinated horror into the fluorescent green throat. Tonsils dripping with foul nectar wiggled in the back of the dark opening. Gray thorns rimmed the edge of the flap and it clamped shut with a sigh of longing.
No. James, you are not making this up. Four beers don't make you hallucinate. A HUNDRED beers couldn't summon this out of your imagination.