Ginny Gall (14 page)

But before he did that he wanted to go home. He loped across the Row, running like a boy who had somewhere to get to but didn’t want anybody to know it.

Many people saw him that evening, a well-formed boy with a bush of thick hair cut in a high part and the handsome face of a blackness that even africano people remarked on, a good boy, they said, son of a murderer who had escaped retribution, a lucky boy despite that, who, so they figured, would some day come into one of the three or four largest fortunes in the quarter—former dewbaby, as they called him, black as grandmama’s skillet and kindly.

He was sure they would be looking for him at home so he ducked around behind the big yellow frame AME church on Jefferson where under a pollarded magnolia three little girls were playing fly the hoop. One of them skipped and fell in the dust. She looked up at him as if he was the cause. In the office he found Miss Marvie Appleton who let him use the phone to call the house.

Miss Parker said no one had been around looking for him. He asked her to put Willie Burt on and after a few minutes his raspy voice said he too hadn’t seen anybody looking. But then maybe, Delvin thought, it was too early. Had Willie seen the Ghost? Sho, he was out in the shed eating apples he stole from Mr. Oliver’s supply. Well, would Willie tell Winston to come meet him over behind Miss Louise Marchant’s house where he was working on something for her?

“What?”

“What what?”

“What is it you be working on?” Willie wanted to know.

“I’m helping her to write a letter.”

“Okay,” Willie said, “I’ll tell him.”

“I need him to come fast.”

Which the Ghost did, hotfooting across the Row to the back door of Miss Louise’s lime-green house. Miss Louise was the unmarried sister of Rev Poulice Marchant who for forty years was the minister of the Sweetwater Holiness church and now ten years after he died continued on in fine form and local respect (Miss Louise did) in her small two-story house that was the only one on her block that was
painted. As Winston started up the brick back steps Delvin called to him from some redtop bushes by a runoff ditch at the bottom of the yard. The Ghost gave him a misshapen grin and loped over.

“Hey, my boon,” he said.

Delvin told him he needed him to go around to the police station to see what he could find out about a boy being shot.

“Ju shoot him?”

“No. It wadn’t me.”

“Okay, fine,” the Ghost said. He’d been living in the shed semi-permanently for a few weeks now, despite being run off twice or three times by Willie or Elmer, slinking back each time under Delvin’s protection.

“I’m going around behind Heberson’s and get something to eat. Let’s meet right there in two hours’ time—around back.”

The Ghost said this was fine with him, grinned and took off running across the yard in his hunched, loping style, his head stiff on his shoulders and his arms swinging as if he was about to grab something.

It was full dark out and gloomy without lights along the streets except here and there on the corners and little wicklamps burning in the houses like it was still the nineteenth century. Instead of going straight to the store Delvin made his way to the Emporium, slipping along the alley behind his old birth house and ducking into the bordello’s wide yard, easing in under one of the big magnolias in back. He wasn’t sure what the Ghost would do and he felt safer near the bordello. The magnolia’s branches drooped all the way to the ground. He climbed up among them, feeling his sense of hopefulness, his strength, ebbing as he climbed and pushed into the smooth fork and lay along the high limb panting, nauseous and afraid he would vomit. His life felt emptied out, like earth from a barrow, and he saw himself alone, a trembling haint on the edge of the world. His mother must have felt like this. He let out a small cry, a squeak of pain and fright. He wanted to throw himself into the air and fly
away but there was no way to do that. His felt his spirit leap out from him like a skittish bird, some creature without knowledge of the world or a way to go. He was suddenly dizzy. “Little Time,” he said, “Little Time,” addressing the tick of his life as if it was a small goblin he might appeal to. But there was nothing. He was terrified of every house in the quarter—in Chattanooga—in the world—but at the same time he wanted to rush into them and beg to be hidden. He thought of the Ghost crammed up under the Emporium. Lord, he would jam himself even deeper if he thought he could stay. He shivered, pressing his face against the tree body. His fingers moved across little whorls and striations like ancient messages age-carved into the bark, indecipherable. “Help me,” he said, “Dear God, Little Time, help me.” His heart hammered like a crazy man trying to get out—or in, he thought, trying to burrow deeper into his own body.

At the three-quarters chiming of the second hour by the courthouse clock he shinnied down and made his way across the Row to Heberson’s. The Ghost was crouched behind a line of garbage cans out back. His eyes gleamed like a cat’s.

“Yeah, they’s been some kind of shooting up that old mountain way. They was talking about it round the jailhouse.”

Delvin felt his insides clutch. A slashing pain driving down his body. He felt suddenly as if he needed to evacuate his bowels. “They say what they have on that?” he said in a crumped, rustly voice.

“Not to me, no, but they was talking about somebody’s got shot up on the mountain and they’s had to carry him out. Haul him out or something—somebody, some mosying wanderer or something or maybe it was a bunch of em up there. Or something else, I can’t remember. It’s mixed up. Shell Pickens—they got
him
on a drunk charge—was shouting in the back.”

“Was it a boy?”

“When? Yeah, I get you. Could have been. You done shot a boy?”

“No.”

“Was it a white boy?”

Delvin ignored the question. “Did they say who did it?”

“They aint come down real hard on that yet. Leastways not in
my hearing. Maybe they holding back on it. Maybe they don’t know. That’d be some luck.”

Delvin turned away. He was afraid he was about to start crying. He felt as if a huge part of him was breaking off, shelving away—as if he was big as a town or a continent, something huge about him that he had never noticed now shifting, rumbling and sliding down, contravening solidity and the future. “You got to excuse me,” he said, ran and pushed through the door of Heberson’s outhouse, shucked, squatted and let loose his bowels. Even as he did so something urged him to flee instantly. He had to grip one of the worn two-by-four supports to hold himself in place. He felt sick, as if his insides had melted in a corrosive heat. He strained over himself, the pungent stink rising as he did so. “Lord God, suppose me,” he said. “Suppose me into your way right now. O Help me help me help me.” He was falling through himself and for a second thought he would pass out. But he came back. He tore off a sheet of the old
Collier’s Encyclopedia
hanging backless on a hook and cleaned himself, fixed his clothes and came out again into the vaguely light-muddled dark behind the store where the Ghost, pale and swaying, piecing out a mountain tune, waited.

“You done fo it now, aint you?” the Ghost said.

The stars faint above the city like pale drops flicked off heaven’s fingers. Never to be the same again. Tick time, he thought, Little Time.

“Was there anything going on at home?”

“I aint been over there, but when I left out Mr. Oliver was preparing a body—Miss Freedly from over on Godown street, that old woman who used to boil up those pots of molasses in her backyard? You didn’t shoot
her
, did you?

“No. She died?”

“Yeah. Waked up dead in her bed this morning, Elmer said. Mr. Oliver is probably just finishing with her now. Funeral’s tomorrow.”

“Would you tell them I have some business over in town and probably won’t be in tonight?”

“Will they believe me?”

“Tell em I’m going shining for rabbits with some boys.”

“Can I go?”

“It’s just something I want you to tell them.”

“Okay.”

They were sitting now on a couple of bottomless rush chairs that Mr. Heberson had set beside a storage shed for possible repairing. Mr. Heberson ran a sideline in repaired used furniture. The backyard was piled with couches and broken tables and smashed-up chairs. From the grocery’s double back doors came the sound of Heberson’s crystal radio playing white church music. Delvin listened for a minute; a few passages were soothing, then a run of growly, stiff exhorting was not. He wanted to phonecall Mr. Oliver, but he better forgo that. A wan emptiness revealed itself under his heart. He longed to go lie down on the big red and gold rug in Mr. O’s bedroom and read his book on sea voyages—longed to be there right now turning the big stiff pages, listening to Mr. O humming under his breath. But he didn’t want to have to tell him what happened. The Ghost’s information had plunged him into a terror so brusque and enveloping he could hardly think. As if a whole scotched world has just shook into place and he stood in the middle of it. A scotched world in a scotched world, he thought and almost laughed. Poor white boy. He hoped he wasn’t dead. Off in the lonely leaf strew of the mountain. Loneliness flooding along inside him as he thought this.

He told the Ghost to run on to the house and then he waited a while before going into the grocery and buying a bag of crackers and some store cheese. Then he crossed the Row to Onely’s house. It was a shanty made of boards tacked onto poles and a roof of slats covered in disintegrating tarpaper. He sneaked up through the smelly yard, a skinny pale dog snuffling and bowing-up with delight at his side, and looked through a crack. There was no sign of Onely. As he walked away down the alley Onely called to him from a mass of elderberry bushes. He stepped out to meet Delvin. The alley smelled like dead animals. Gray puffed clouds were out all over the sky, sliding along, hauled like barges by a great current before a pinched moon. Onely
had a hat, an old soft snapbrim with a hole in the crown, pulled over his eyes. He didn’t push it back to talk to Delvin.

“I was afraid you’d run off to turn me in,” he said. His large teeth gleamed as he spoke.

“I wouldn’t do that. I didn’t even think of it. Besides, we’re two colored boys. They’d be more happy to fry two than one.”

“I hadn’t seen anything unusual around here,” Onely said.

Delvin told him about the Ghost’s visit to the police station.

“That humbugger. He probably turned us in.”

“He wouldn’t. He’s a free-hearted soul.”

“You think they want to keep it quiet til they catch us?”

“They couldn’t do that. This is the kind of thing word gets around on. You sure you shot that boy?”

“You heard him cry out yourself.”

“I heard somebody.”

“That was probably the somebody that said
They shot ’im
. Dang. Even if we’d missed him by a mile, they know we’s black uns and they’ll come at us just the same. You shouldn’t a spooked em.”

Delvin thought that too but he didn’t say anything.

He wanted to tell Onely how scared he was but he thought better of it. If they got out of this Onely might hold it against him, or, before that, he might think Delvin couldn’t be trusted and no telling what would happen then.

“I’m shook,” he said, unable after all to help himself.

“You not the only one.”

In the dark stinking alley piled along one side with barrels containing not yet expendable refuse, they stood in the deeper dark cast by the shadow of a tin-sided shed. Delvin leaned against the tin that was cool and made a low crackling sound as it slightly gave. He pulled himself back upright.

“I was thinking of running off into the hills.”

He hadn’t wanted to tell Onely that either, but maybe he would want to come with him. In the dimness Delvin could see in Onely’s eyes knowledge of his life. You can tell what people know, he thought. That was the difference between eyes of the living and eyes
of the dead. Dead didn’t know anything. Once he had realized that, he was no longer nervous around corpses. He studied Onely’s round face.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m gon catch a train. I was on my way to the yards when I saw you coming around the corner.”

“I’ll go with you,” Delvin said, and the two of them started out. But when they reached the train yard just beyond the south side of the quarter he changed his mind. Not at first but during the time they waited for the train to form up.

“In twenty minutes on the roads we’ll be in Georgia or Alabama and they won’t come looking for us down there,” Onley said.

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

He’d be trapped on a train. He wanted to be on his feet, running.

“I don’t think this is for me,” he said.

But he waited with Onley in the empty boxcar they’d crawled into.

“As soon as this thing starts I’m gone,” Delvin said. But when the car jolted and stopped he only looked up without moving and when it jarred into motion he got up and went to the door but he didn’t jump out. “I’ll ride a little ways with you,” he said coming back to where Onley sat with his chin tipped up and his eyes closed.

He stayed on until the train passed the junction at Buttonwood, first settlement inside the Alabama line, where he intended to jump down, but he stayed on instead, through Buttonwood and then through Shelby and then Holderness and Barwick. It wasn’t until the train rattled through Slimton, just past the two straggly, crooked blocks of the town, as the freight began to pick up speed past the long curve leaving the Culver Ginning Company behind, that he jumped down, rolled into a dry ditch, got up and walked away down the road, heading, to his vague surprise, not back to Chattanooga, but west.

“Since then,” he said, talking to himself as he walked along a hard dirt road, “old Delvin’s been on the loose end of loose.” He thought
of turning up in Chicago, half dead, penniless, and making a life for himself as a musician. He had heard Louis Armstrong play on the radio and had once seen Duke Ellington walking down Adams street on his way to conduct his orchestra at the Harmony ballroom. He carried a light cane that he swished like a little limber sword as he walked. Or maybe he would live on the rough streets until winter came to Chicago and then catch a train to Miami.