— No, sir. I’m just saying.
— You just saying.
— Yes, sir.
The boat rocked in the swells. It was quiet, occasional gull creak.
— Damned if you ain’t about either the dumbest or the smartest black son of a bitch I ever knew. Didn’t know better I’d think you were extorting me, here.
Frank shook his head and smiled.
— No, sir. Do what, now?
— Aw kiss my ass. Extortion. Blackmail, call it.
— No, sir, I ain’t — no, sir, don’t say that. Mr. Earl, I’m saying I wouldn’t do that, now.
— Yeah, Earl said. -That’s how they all do it.
Frank shook his head and gave the Mississippi Sound his grave look again.
— I don’t know whether to knock you in the head with this anchor and throw you overboard or pay you a compliment, Earl said.
— No, sir. You don’t have to do neither one.
The two men sat there looking at each other, boat rocking, clouds creeping overhead, gulls laughing and creaking, swells slopping against the bow.
— Well what about Creasie? She tells Birdie you two are married.
Frank drank the rest of his Coke, set the bottle in the boat floor beside his feet.
— Well, no sir, we’re not married, not official. She’s a good woman, now. I can tell she’s set on making babies, though, and I figure she keep on trying she going to get it right one day.
— You want that?
— Mr. Earl, he said, I can’t afford no babies, nobody knows that like you.
— I know it, Earl said. -I can’t afford you to have no babies, either, know what I mean.
— Yes, sir. Frank smiled a wan smile. -I guess I just as soon Creasie didn’t know nothing about it.
— Go like you came.
Frank nodded. -Yes, sir, I guess that’s about it.
He sat there watching a gull while Earl finished his sandwich and drink and watched him. Earl felt like he’d never seen this joker before in his life, like he’d just winked into his boat there beside him out of the air. What am I thinking, he said to himself. Big son of a bitch could break my neck and take this boat to goddamn Cuba, if he wanted. But that’s not what he wants. Just wants a better job. He shook his head and pitched the empty Coke bottle into the water.
— Cover, he said.
— Mr. Earl, Frank said.
— Yes, goddamnit.
— If you was to pay me a little more than what you paying me now, I think I could get by down there in Tallahassee, now. I wouldn’t ask but I been there, and it cost more to get by.
— How much more then do you figure it costs to get by?
— Well, sir, I guess I’d be doing at least two, three times the work I do here, and quality work, too. And it cost more just ever way you look at it. Say fo’ times what I make here I figure I can get by in Tallahassee, yes sir, that’s about all it take.
Earl stared at him a minute, then looked away, speechless. In a little bit he reached over the bow and hauled up the anchor and laid it in the boat at his feet. Motioned with his arm for Frank to crank the motor, get them going. Frank hesitated, then nodded, turned slowly to the motor and gripped the pull cord. He held this station for a long few seconds, then gave it a snap pull and set it firing, phlegmatic, then a baritone pushing them up and out into the Sound.
A MAN COME into the store one day to take his order on Tweedies and says, — Say you know I was in Conway, Arkansas, the other day and saw this thing, man had a hardware store and out on the porch had this nigger dummy working an electric saw, and I stopped to see it. Said he got it from you. I said I was going to be calling on you this week, what a coincidence.
— What’s the name of the store? Earl says.
— What?
— What’s the name of the man’s hardware store. I’m going to buy that nigger dummy back from him.
— What for? says the salesman. -What use you got for it in a women’s shoe store?
— I’m not going to use him in my goddamn store. It’s my dummy and I want it back. My father sold it without asking me.
— Well don’t tell the man I told you where it was.
Drove up there the next Friday evening, arrived the next morning just as the man was opening his store and setting Oscar out on the porch along with a radial-arm saw and fixing his hand to the handle.
— Yes, sir, how can I hep you this morning? Earl standing there below the porch steps with his hands in his trousers pockets, tired and a Camel in his lips.
— That’s my nigger you’ve got there, I’m afraid.
Man just straightened up and looked at him oddly.
— You from Mississippi?
— I am. My papa sold you this thing without asking me. I’d like to buy it back.
— Well, now, I don’t know. This thing’s pulled in a lot of business for me, here. Sides, this is what it was made for! Mr. Urquhart said you own a ladies’ shoe store. -Yes.
— Well, sir, not to be disrespectful, but I can’t see you got much use for this fellow in a ladies’ shoe store. -Never mind why I want him back. I just said he was mine and was sold without my knowledge or permission. I understand you paid good money for him, now I’m offering to pay good money to get him back.
Man stood there blinking in the early sun for a minute, squinting at him. Hand on Oscar’s arm as if to hold him back, to quiet him. Oscar grinning as ever in the morning light, as wide-eyed and oblivious as ever, ready to work if need be, ready to sit forever if need be, waiting in the dark on some shelf if need be. There and not there.
— Well, sir, the man said slowly. He’s worth a lot more to me than what I paid for him, considering the business he brings in. I sell him back to you, I’m going to want to get me another one. First off, bound to cost more to get another one these days. Second, I wouldn’t count on being able to find another one, if I was to try.
— What did you pay Papa for him?
He paused.
— I paid fifty dollars.
— I’ll give you a hundred.
— Mr. Urquhart, this nigger’s already made me at least five hundred dollars in business.
— I’ll give you two hundred cash, then. You’re not on the highway, here. You’ve already got all the new business from this thing you’re going to get. It’s just decoration now and I’m offering to make it seven hundred dollars you’ve made from him, which gives you a profit of something like twelve or thirteen hundred percent on your investment. I don’t know about the hardware business, but in the shoe business we don’t usually get returns like that.
Man stood there blinking.
— I don’t have all day, Earl said, lighting another Camel. -I got to get back to Mississippi by this evening.
— WHAT DID YOU want to go and do that for? Birdie said.
— It belonged to me.
— Well we sure don’t have any use for an old colored dummy you’re going to let sit and rot out in the shed.
— It might be valuable one day.
— Well that’s not like you, to say something like that. It’s of no use to you now, and that’s what I’d expect you to say about it.
— So it makes no sense.
— It doesn’t seem to, to me.
— Well then all right it makes no sense. Humor me this once.
— For two hundred dollars? That takes a heap of humor, Earl.
— Humor me. If I want to keep an electric nigger dummy in my shed, then let me do it and leave me in peace. Some things a man does he can’t explain and doesn’t care to.
He went out to the car, reached into the backseat and pulled him out, hefted him limp and wooden onto his shoulder and carried him out to the shed and set him against the wall there while he unlocked the hasp on the door. When he’d opened the door, he walked in and struck his Zippo and looked around, saw the empty spot on the high shelf where he’d kept it before Junius sold it, clanked the Zippo shut. He went back out, hefted it back onto his shoulder, and took it into the shed and pushed it up onto the shelf. In the dim light he reached up to straighten the head on the shoulders, to rest the hands in the lap. He turned the feet so they pointed straight ahead where they hung there. Stood there to catch his breath, then light a smoke.