Soane sniffed the dark air, testing its weight, before closing the door. "Can't tell, exactly. But he has too many reasons for wearing thin shoes."
"Chasing tail, I expect. 'Member that gal dragged herself in town some time back and was staying out to that Convent?" Soane turned to him, coffee tin at her breast as she eased off the lid. "Why you say 'dragged'? Why you have to say 'dragged' like that? You see her?"
"No, but other folks did."
"And?"
Deek yawned. "And nothing. Coffee, baby. Coffee, coffee."
"So don't say 'dragged.' "
"Okay, okay. She didn't drag in." Deek laughed, dropping his outer clothes on the floor. "She floated in."
"What's wrong with the closet, Deek?" Soane looked at the waterproof pants, the black and red jacket, the flannel shirt. "And what's that supposed to mean?"
"Heard her shoes had six-inch heels."
"You lying."
"And flying."
"Well. If she's still at the Convent, she must be all right." Deek massaged his toes. "You just partial to those women out there. I'd be careful if I was you. How many of them now? Four?"
"Three. The old lady died, remember?"
Deek stared at her, then looked away. "What old lady?"
"The Reverend Mother. Who'd you think?"
"Oh, right. Yeah." Deek continued stirring the blood in his feet.
Then he laughed. "First time Roger got to use his big new van."
"Ambulance," said Soane, gathering up his clothes. "Brought three payments in the next day. Hope he can keep up the rest. Not enough hospital or mortuary business around here justify that overpriced buggy he got."
The coffee smell was starting, and Deek rubbed his palms.
"Is he hurting?" Soane asked.
"Not yet. But since his profit depends on the sick and the dead, I'd just as soon he went bankrupt."
"Deek!"
"Couldn't do a damn thing for my boys. Buried in a bag like kittens."
"They had lovely coffins! Lovely!"
"Yeah, but inside…."
"Quit, Deek. Why don't you just quit." Soane touched her throat. "I 'spect he'll make out. If I go before he does. In which case, well, you know what to do. I don't feature riding in that van nohow, but I want a top-of-the-line box, so he'll make out just fine. Fleet's the one in trouble." He stood at the sink and lathered his hands. "You keep saying that. How come?"
"Mail order."
"What?" Soane poured coffee into the big blue cup her husband preferred.
"You all go to Demby, don't you? When you want a toaster or an electric iron you order out of a catalogue and go all the way out there to pick it up. Where's that put him?"
"Fleet never has much on hand. And what he does have has been there too long. That lounge chair changed colors three times sitting in the window."
"That's why," said Deek. "If he can't move old inventory, he can't buy new."
"He used to do all right."
Deek tipped a little coffee into the saucer. "Ten years ago. Five." The dark pool rippled under his breath. "Boys coming out of Veetnam, getting married, setting up. War money. Farms doing okay, everybody doing okay." He sucked at the saucer rim and sighed his pleasure. "Now, well…."
"I don't understand, Deek."
"I do." He smiled up at her. "You don't need to."
She had not meant that she didn't understand what he was talking about. She'd meant she didn't understand why he wasn't worried enough by their friends' money problems to help them out. Why, for instance, couldn't Menus have kept the house he bought? But Soane didn't try to explain; she just looked closely at his face. Smooth, still handsome after twenty-six years and beaming, now, with satisfaction. Shooting well that morning had settled him and returned things to the way they ought to be. Coffee the right color; the right temperature. And later today, quail without their brains would melt in his mouth. Every day the weather permitted, Deacon Morgan drove his brilliant black sedan three-fourths of a mile. From his own house on St. John Street, he turned right at the corner onto Central, passed Luke, Mark and Matthew, then parked neatly in front of the bank. The silliness of driving to where he could walk in less time than it took to smoke a cigar was eliminated, in his view, by the weight of the gesture. His car was big and whatever he did in it was horsepower and worthy of comment: how he washed and waxed it himself-never letting K. D. or any enterprising youngster touch it; how he chewed but did not light cigars in it; how he never leaned on it, but if you had a conversation with him, standing near it, he combed the hood with his fingernails, scraping flecks he alone could see, and buffing invisible stains with his pocket handkerchief. He laughed along with friends at his vanity, because he knew their delight at his weakness went hand in hand with their awe: the magical way he (and his twin) accumulated money. His prophetic wisdom. His total memory. The most powerful of which was one of his earliest.
Forty-two years ago he had fought for hand room in the rear window of Big Daddy Morgan's Model T, space in which to wave goodbye to his mother and baby sister, Ruby. The rest of the family-Daddy, Uncle Pryor, his older brother Elder, and Steward, his twin-were packed tight against two peck baskets of food. The journey they were about to begin would take days, maybe two weeks. The Second Grand Tour, Daddy said. The Last Grand Tour, laughed Uncle Pryor. The first one had been in 1910, before the twins had been born, while Haven was still struggling to come alive. Big Daddy drove his brother Pryor and his firstborn son, Elder, all over the state and beyond to examine, review and judge other Colored towns. They planned to visit two outside Oklahoma and five within: Boley, Langston City, Rentiesville, Taft, Clearview, Mound Bayou, Nicodemus. In the end, they made it to only four. Big Daddy, Uncle Pryor and Elder spoke endlessly of that trip, how they matched wits with and debated preachers, pharmacists, dry-goods store owners, doctors, newspaper publishers, schoolteachers, bankers. They discussed malaria, the booze bill, the threat of white immigrants, the problems with Creek freedmen, the trustworthiness of boosters, the practicality of high book learning, the need for technical training, the consequences of statehood, lodges and the violence of whites, random and organized, that swirled around them. They stood at the edge of cornfields, walked rows of cotton. They visited print shops, elocution classes, church services, sawmills; they observed irrigation methods and storage systems. Mostly they looked at land, houses, roads.
Eleven years later Tulsa was bombed, and several of the towns Big Daddy, Pryor and Elder had visited were gone. But against all odds, in 1932 Haven was thriving. The crash had not touched it: personal savings were substantial, Big Daddy Morgan's bank had taken no risks (partly because white bankers locked him out, partly because the subscription shares had been well protected) and families shared everything, made sure no one was short. Cotton crop ruined? The sorghum growers split their profit with the cotton growers. A barn burned? The pine sappers made sure lumber "accidentally" rolled off wagons at certain places to be picked up later that night. Pigs rooted up a neighbor's patch? The neighbor was offered replacements by everybody and was assured ham at slaughter. The man whose hand was healing from a chopping block mistake would not get to the second clean bandage before a fresh cord was finished and stacked. Having been refused by the world in 1890 on their journey to Oklahoma, Haven residents refused each other nothing, were vigilant to any need or shortage. The Morgans did not admit to taking pleasure in the failure of some of those Colored towns-they carried the rejection of 1890 like a bullet in the brain. They simply remarked on the mystery of God's justice and decided to take the young twins and go on a second tour to see for themselves.
What they saw was sometimes nothing, sometimes sad, and Deek remembered everything. Towns that looked like slave quarters, picked up and moved. Towns intoxicated with wealth. Other towns affecting sleep-squirreling away money, certificates, deeds in unpainted houses on unpaved streets.