The failing man rode her horseback across the room. He wrapped his skinny arms around her neck and gritted his teeth. He was panting by the time she lowered him into the water. When she turned around he saw that there were tears in her eyes. She went down on her knees and moaned as if something had broken inside her body.
“You hurtin’, sugah?” he asked, reaching out to touch the pale cheek.
“Lie back now, Soupspoon,” she said. She breathed deeply and stood up.
Soupspoon nodded in the hot tub while Kiki took his pants and underwear and poured ammonia over them in the sink. Then she took a sponge from a high hook and squatted down next to the tub.
She was gentle where the skin of his buttocks had chafed. She washed his chest and arms and down between his legs. All the time she hummed a sad sweet tune. Soupspoon didn’t know the song, but he heard the long-drawn country notes in it.
“Where’s that boy?” he asked.
Kiki brought her ear to his lips, and he repeated the question.
“Randy’s gone, Soup. He has a store down on St. Mark’s.”
“And what’s your name?”
“Kiki.”
“Why you take me in here, Kiki?”
She moved her head back and looked him in the eye for a moment. Her eyes were the kind of green that you saw sometimes in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
“Don’t you remember?” she asked.
Soupspoon stared at the woman, too tired and sick to try.
“It was on that real nice day after Christmas. We were coming home and you were sitting next to the door on that old box,” she said, prompting him.
Soupspoon shook his head slowly.
“I was really sad. Something... something happened to my friend where we worked and she was staying with me. I guess we both looked pretty sad, because you called out and said, ‘Don’t worry, ladies, you’re young — you’ll be okay.’
“You didn’t even know us, but that made us both happy. We went upstairs and laughed and now Abby’s just fine in Boston — just like you said.”
When Soupspoon started to talk again, Kiki moved close to hear him.
“You go through all’a that downstairs just ’cause of a few words? You crazy, girl?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I guess you could say that. So crazy that I don’t think somebody should just stand by if something is happening and they know it’s wrong.”
She stopped a moment, the last word half-gagged in her throat. Soupspoon watched her eyes as they shifted from friendly to hard and clear.
“I just got back from the hospital. A boy stabbed me. Little bastard tried to kill me, but he couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t die. All this time I been afraid and now I see that I don’t have to be. You don’t have to be scared, because you’re going to die when you’re meant to — not when somebody else thinks so.
“When I saw you out there in the street I knew that they couldn’t hurt you — because they couldn’t hurt me. It was like I was meant to be there. Like I was meant to save you.”
Her breath trembled behind a rage.
She pulled a straight-back oak chair up next to the tub, sat, and rubbed his chest again. She washed his body while Soupspoon looked at her face. He never thought that he’d be this comfortable again.
After the bath she helped him into the chair and dried him off. Then she put a terry-cloth robe around his shoulders and helped him to a chair at the table in the center of the room.
“I’ll make you some tea for your throat,” she said.
Kiki took a bottle of Jack Daniel’s sour mash from the cabinet for her tea.
They drank and she ate pork and beans. Soupspoon couldn’t talk for his sore throat. Kiki didn’t talk either. She just sat looking at him, taking him in in a way that almost scared the bluesman.
“You should eat your food, Mr. Wise.”
Soupspoon put his hand to his stomach and shook his head, no.
“When did you eat last? Yesterday?” No.
“The day before?”
Soupspoon hunched his shoulders.
After a while a knock came at the door. The two looked up at each other. The knock came again.
Three
The woman at the door wore a cheap cranberry jacket and a skirt of the same color. There was a grease spot on the hem and a weak red stain the size of a fried egg on her white cotton blouse. She had hard brown eyes on a young face that was too round for a white woman’s, Kiki thought. The leather satchel that hung from her shoulder was overflowing with papers in manila folders. It was so heavy that the young woman favored that side. Her brown hair was braided tightly across the top of her head, and the twist to her lips said that she didn’t want to be there.
The stranger stared at her, expecting common courtesy, but Kiki didn’t say a word.
After a while Soupspoon coughed at the back of the room.
“Is that Mr. Wise?” the woman asked.
“Who are you?” Kiki replied.
“Tatum,” the woman said stiffly. “Miss Tatum from Social Services.”
Kiki counted the painful pulses in her side, hoping that Miss Tatum would leave.
“Is Mr. Wise in there?” Miss Tatum asked in a loud voice. Maybe she thought Kiki had tied the old man up; was selling him off for body parts.
“What’s it to you who’s in my house?”
“I’m from Social Services.”
“So? I’m from Arkansas. Does that mean I could go and bother you at your table?”
“I’m here to pick up Mr. Wise. I’m supposed to help him get to the Bryant Shelter.”
“That was a long time ago, honey. Back when the sun was still up and they had that poor man down in the street. That was hours ago. The man you wanted would’ve froze up and died waitin’ for you.”
“I thank you for taking him in, Miss...?”
Kiki stayed quiet and held the doorknob for support.
“...I know a lot of people wouldn’t have taken him in. I appreciate your, um, concern.”
“Soupspoon’s with me now,” Kiki said. “We don’t need you.”
“I’m sorry, but I will have to check that for myself.” Miss Tatum looked over Kiki’s shoulder, trying to see into the room.
“Tell me something?” Kiki asked.
The social worker’s lips twisted so that she could barely ask, “What?”
“What would you do with him now, even if he wanted to go with you?”
“I’d take him to the shelter tonight and the hospital tomorrow. Mr. Wise is a sick man.”
“You waited until he couldn’t even talk to decide he’s sick?”
“There are a lot of people at the shelter, Miss, um... Sometimes it takes a little longer than we’d like.”
“Well, he’s with me now.”
“If you don’t let me speak to Mr. Wise, I will have to get the police.”
“You can come in, but that’s all. Just ask him if he wants to stay and then get your butt away from us.”
Soupspoon was tilted over to the left side in his chair. He gaped at the women. His face, handsome at one time, was shrunken with deep furrows where his cheeks sagged and caved in from lost molars. His lower eyelids hung open, exposing their glistening red membranes.
“Mr. Wise?” Miss Tatum said.
Soupspoon’s mouth opened and closed as he nodded.
“I’ve come to take you back home to the shelter.”
The jaw swung loosely on its hinges when he shook his head.
“I don’t know if you understand me, Mr. Wise. I’ve come to take you back to the shelter.”
The loose jaw answered back. Then the sick man leaned forward, looking as if he might topple sideways out of the chair, and made a sound that was unintelligible and obviously painful to his throat.
“I can’t understand you, sir!” Miss Tatum shouted. “Can’t you speak up?”