A Moment in the Sun (55 page)

“I suppose he’ll be different,” says Mother. “A man on his own.”

Jessie lays her toast down and hurries upstairs to study her wardrobe.

Alma throws the last of the linens into the boiling water, poking them under with the paddle, adds a double handful of soap flakes, then stirs the mass of it around till soap foam comes to the surface. She has the shirtwaists, petticoats, and collars in a pile by the starch tub, has Doctor’s clothes all separated the way he asked her to after the smallpox hit in January. She has to lean over the kettle for leverage, working the paddle with both hands, and the rising steam wets her face and forces her eyes shut. It’s a relief when she hears Honniker’s man down the street and can leave it for a moment.

Alma pulls her wet shirt away from her body, smooths it down, and walks around the house. Honniker’s man, Simon, tall, gap-toothed, cinnamon colored, has a bell on his wagon so he doesn’t need to call out. There are always a half-dozen dogs, strays mostly, following him around town, though he swears he never throws them a scrap.

“Alma Moultrie, needs some poultry,” he smiles when she steps out to the curb and he pulls the reins in.

“Today you right,” she says to his usual greeting. “Two big fryers.”

“Company coming.” Simon leans back to uncover the birds and Alma picks out a pair. Honniker mostly sells to white folks, but you can buy what he calls the “colored cuts,” the head and trotters and innards, out the back door or off Simon’s wagon. Doctor draws the line at anything below bacon or cured ham, though. “If these low-class negroes attended to their diet,” he says, “they wouldn’t fall ill all the time.”

“We got Mr. Lunceford Junior coming back from the war. Usually I’d make him a stew, but that’s more time than I got today.”

Simon wraps the birds in butcher paper, hands them down. “So after you got your family all squared away here, nine, ten o’clock, think you like to step out with me?”

He’s a nice-looking man, Simon, and Wilma Reaves says that Lula Mae who used to live with him is gone and not coming back. But there’s the chance that Clarence—Henry—whatever name he’s carrying now, will show up and as tired as she is—

“Spect I’ll be later than that.”

“Party at Brunjes’ still be goin no matter when you free.”

The dogs are up around the wagon now, sniffing.

“Imonna walk into Brunjes’ all by myself.”

“Plenty of ladies do.”

“They some that might, but they aint no ladies.”

Simon laughs and twitches the reins to wake his horse up. The dogs shy away, heads low, as the wheels begin to turn.

“I’ll have Mr. Honniker put this on their slip.”

Wilma Reaves said he was just too good to Lula Mae, that some women need a rough man and she left to look for one.

“Simon,” she calls, and he looks back to her from his seat, the motion of the wagon ringing his bell. “Ast me again sometime, you think of a nicer place to visit.”

Coop is the last one off the train, checking the platform on both sides through the windows before he makes his move. There are people he doesn’t want to see, not all of them lawmen. Snapper Jones is at his little stand like always, unseeing eyes a milky blue, fingers stained a half-dozen shades of polish. Coop hasn’t spoken to the man in years.

“Shine?”

“Wouldn’t mind one.” Coop sits and props his feet up. The old man is surprisingly limber, squatting down to probe at his shoes with an oxblood finger.

“Black.”

“That’s right. Make em sparkle.”

Snapper wipes the leather down. “New in town?”

“May as well be,” says Coop. The old man’s scalp is yellow brown where the hair is gone on the top. “How things workin for us these days?”

“Oh, lively, lively.” Snapper taps a dab of polish onto one shoe, begins to work it in. “Repubikins got the mayor’s seat again, ony there’s three different gangs of em claims it. Mist’ Wright seem to won out, an he aint a bad man. Then there’s that old fox crowd, they’s Democracks, been rilin up the peckerwoods somethin awful. Got these Red Shirts and Rough Riders—not the Teddy Rooseville kind, these is local boys—marching around, makin speeches, shootin off their pistols, say they gone make this a white man’s city again.”

Coop snorts a laugh. “What they think it is now?”

“I spose they won’t be happy till they push us all the way back down to slavery days.” Snapper starts to buff the shoetops, popping his rag. “We got three of us that’s aldermen, we got police, mail carriers, Mr. Dancy who runs the Customs at the port, got Mr. Miller that own so much property he got white folks owes him money—and that don’t sit right with these plantation colonels. What they want is our
vote
, see, and we aint givin that back.”

“They took it in Georgia,” says Coop, standing to hold the shine in the light, one foot at a time. “South Carolina too.”

“Well, then, they got some sorry niggers down there.”

Coop has never voted. It starts with giving your address to register, and why make it easy for them to find you? “So where’s a black man ought to go after dark?” he asks, changing his tone. “I only got tonight.”

Snapper glances up at him. “What you lookin for?”

“Hot dice and cold beer,” says Coop. “That’ll get me started.”

“Oh, there’s Darden’s, there’s Pompey Galloway’s place on Castle, there’s Brunjes’ saloon in George Heyer’s store, he allus got a crap game goin.”

“Probly usin the same old bones, too. Lopsided little pocket-robbers.”

Snapper grins. “I know you! You Clarence Rice, took off four, five years back!”

“That boy dead and forgotten,” says Coop, tossing an extra coin into the blind man’s cigar box and stepping down to go. “Let’s keep him that way.”

Jessie is thrilled to see her brother, of course, to feel the new strength in him when they embrace, but then there he is, Royal, standing back out of the light like a word that nobody will utter. Father is smiling, it’s so wonderful to see him really smile, but when he turns to Royal it hardens somehow and her heart sinks, the impossibility of it all, the silliness of her fantasies coming home to her and she stands immobile in the spot she has chosen where the best of the afternoon light slants in, smiling prettily but no more than that, not even able to take his hand.

“I’m pleased to see you’ve passed the test as well, young man.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Scott, isn’t it?”

He knows it’s Scott, of course, Royal’s own mother cleaned his office for years before he discovered she was selling home cures to her neighbors and had to dismiss her. Jessie’s cheeks burn with embarrassment.

“Yes, sir.”

Royal says it evenly, without deference, and she sees he is different too. He is thin, sickly thin, but it’s like he knows something about them he didn’t know when he left. Mother feels it as well, made uncomfortable, and does not call to Alma for cool drinks.

“Your mother must be so relieved to have you back,” she says. “You have seen her, haven’t you?”

“I’m on my way,” says Royal. “Just wanted to pay my respects, M’am.”

“That’s very kind of you.” Mother, who tells her that an awkward situation can always be defused with the proper grace and charm, Mother just smiles at him and lets the moment hang and Junior is about to step in when Royal saves him the trouble.

“Thank you M’am,” he says, and turns to her and nods—only that, or is it a bit of a bow?—and says “Miss Jessie,” and turns to leave.

“In the morning, old man,” calls Junior.

“I’ll be there.”

Then he is gone and all the strength rushes out of her while Mother reacts to the hard news that Junior has only the one night to spend here before he’s off to the West and Royal too, thinks Jessie, I’ve lost him, lost him before I ever had him! Unless, and this is all that gives her the strength to stir herself from the suddenly oppressive patch of sun and take part in the family conversation, unless she read the haunted look in his eyes correctly, the look he gave when he nodded or half-bowed to her upon leaving, a look that made her hear his voice, his true voice, inside her head.

Save me
, he said.
Save me
.

Alma is in the kitchen peeling yams, one of Junior’s favorites, wondering why they haven’t called her out to greet him yet, she wiped that boy’s nose enough times, when there is a rap at the back door. It is Royal Scott, looking tragic in a uniform too big for him.

“Little Roy,” she says, wiping her hands on her apron. “Aw honey, you come back all right.”

Royal nods, hands her a folded note. “Would you give this to her?”

Jessie has pestered her with a thousand questions about him, about what he’s really like, about what he might think of her, but Royal has never asked Alma to go between them before. She stuffs the note in her apron pocket. It will be trouble, whatever she does with it.

“If I get a chance,” she says. She thought she heard him out front before, so this is secret business, not just a hello. “You back for good?”

“Just tonight. We’re chasing after the regiment.”

“You know the one calls hisself Cooper?”

“He got off the train with us.”

Alma smiles. “Well, sometime later, I get alone with her, I’ll pass this on.”

“I preciate it.” He steps away.

“And tell your mama Imonna be by for more poke root.”

“I’ll do that.”

She can hear Junior telling stories in the music room when she goes back to the yams. He’ll come in, by and by, and make a fuss over her. A thoughtful boy, Junior, and she wonders if he had him one of those Cuban gals in the drawings, if he’s more than his daddy’s little echo after being to war. Maybe Clarence—Coop—will be by later. Man like Coop is a cool breeze in August. It don’t last long, feels good when it turns your way, then leaves you sticky and wanting more. Never know when a breeze like that coming up, but you won’t get through the heavy days without one.

“Alma!” cries Junior when he stomps into the kitchen. “How’s my best girl?”

Early is at the crate and Coop knows it’s his lucky night. A quick peek from the swinging door that leads from the store in the front—nobody here yet he’s got bad blood with—and he steps up to the bar.

“Look what crawled back from the grave!” calls Brunjes, laying him down a cold one in a mug. “Must be the Judgment Day.”

There is a table of young sports in the corner who look over wondering who he is, Early playing it fast and ragged, nodding to him over the keys, three or four women he doesn’t recognize and the usual Harnett Street crowd. Simon Green is there, like always mimicking the sausage-eater he works for.

“
Gott im Himmel!
” he cries when he sees Coop. “
Ist der schwartzer goniff!
”

There is some back-slapping and old jokes then, a few happy to see him and the others with one nervous eye on the door. He almost killed Pharaoh Ballard here one night, or Pharaoh almost killed him, and the police must have come sniffing round more than once after he left town.

“Somebody told me you was on a work gang down South Cahlina,” says Brunjes.

“Still there,” Coop gives him a look. “If you know what’s what.”

Little Bit appears at his elbow.

“Clarence. Gone, but not forgotten.”

“Little Bit. Forgotten, but not
gone
.”

The old boys laugh at this. A couple of the sports drift over.

“Way I recollect, you owes me fi’ dollars.”

“Damn, must of left it in my other pants.”

More laughter.

“How bout that uniform, brother?” asks one of the young ones, who Coop can’t place. “You was down there fightin?”

“Smack in the middle of it.”

Some of the women are pressing close now. There is a short one in a green dress, little bit of a thing, got her hair in a Indian braid.

“What them Spanish look like?”

“Oh,” says Coop, turning to rest his back against the bar, “mostly they look just like white folks. Dark hair, but white-complected.”

“And they let you shoot em?”

“As many as I could hit.”

The crowd laughs and Brunjes tops his beer off. “On the house tonight, brother.”

Little Bit has stopped looking at him. “Fi’ dollars aint a
pit
tance.”

You don’t want to take Little Bit too light. Smallish man like that, known to handle a wager, he’s got to back it up with steel.

“I’d of paid you back already, brother, if
cir
cumstances hadn’t come between us.” A few chuckles. Coop can feel the others, especially the young ones, hoping for a fight. But he’s not in the mood for one yet. “What you say,” and he puts a hand on Little Bit’s shoulder, “we get up a card game later, and the first fi’ dollars you bet comes out of my pocket?”

It isn’t a surrender and it isn’t a holdout, either, and in front of all these eyes Little Bit knows it’s the best he’ll do without killing the man. He tips his little bowler. “I looks forward to it.”

Early switches to a waltz now, but cutting it up with his right hand. After the thudding
oompah
of the regiment band it brings a smile to Coop’s face.

“Almost forgot what
mu
sic sound like.”

“But you got a band come with you to the battles.” It’s the young sport that asked about his uniform.

“Yeah, and a mule got a dick.” The Indian-looking gal laughs with the others. “But aint much gonna result from it. Way the military is, everything by the
numbers
, see, which means right square on the beat.”

“You carry a pistol?” Another of the young ones, more familiar.

“Officers got the sidearm—that’s for shootin snakes and deserters. Fightin men, that’s the sergeants on down, we carry a Krag rifle. Drill a hole in your skull a hundred yards away.”

The boy, cause he is not out from his teens yet, looks once to the door before asking. “Any way a man get one of them without he’s in the Army?”

Coop recognizes him. “You Twyman Wilson’s brother.”

“That’s right.”

“How he is?”

The boy shrugs. “There was a accident at Sprunt’s.” Sprunt owns the cotton press and half of the waterfront. “He passed.”

Coop nods. “Sorry to hear that. What you want a rifle for?”