Texas Summer (14 page)

Though everyone had heard the story before, they almost all laughed, because of C.K.’s manner of telling it, the mock way he frowned and grimaced, and the short explosive way he delivered the “now-you-is-
equal
” refrain, making it nearly unintelligible.

“Ah think I know what he tryin’ to say,” said Big Nail, to no one in particular, holding a pair of dice by his ear, shaking them softly, “ah jest wondah why he don’t put his money...where his big mouf is!” And he threw the dice, saying: “Hot...
seben!
”

So the game was joined, while on the stool against the wall where Harold sat, Blind Tom Ransom played the blues — and as the crap-game got under way, his head was lifted, sightless eyes seeming to range out over the players, singing:

     “If you evah go to Fut Wurth

     Boy you bettah ack right

     You bettah not ar-gy

     An’ you bettah not fight!

     “Shruf Tomlin of Fut Wurth

     Cays a foaty-fouh gun

     If you evah see ’im comin’

     Well it too late to run!

     “’Cause he like to shoot rab-bit

     Like to shoot ’em on de run

     Seen dat Shruf hit a rab-bit

     Wif his foaty-fouh gun!”

Someone encouraged him: “
Tell
it, Blind Tom!”

     “An’ he like to shoot de spar-ry

     An’ he like to shoot de quail

     An’ dere ain’t many nig-ger

     In de Fut Wurth jail!”

“Goddam, sing it, Blind Tom!”

And in a high wailing crescendo:

     
“Yes he like to shoot de spar-ry

     
An’ he like to shoot de quail!

     
An’ dere ain’t many nig-ger

     
In de Fut Wurth jail!”

The crap-game progressed through the afternoon; by four o’clock there were about fifteen shooters. Harold had seen C.K. cleaned out three times, and each time leave the bar, to come back a few minutes later with a new stake. The last time, though, he had come back with only another thirty-nine-cent bottle of Lucy.

“Put this bottle aside for me, my man,” he said to Wesley, “till ah call for it later, in the cool of the evenin’.”

“Who’s winnin’?” asked Old Wesley.

“Ah wouldn’t know nothin’ ’bout that aspect of the game, ah assure you,” said C.K.

“Big Nail winnin’!” said a boy about Harold’s age who was picking cigarette butts off the floor by the bar. “Big Nail hot as a two-dollah pistol!”

C.K. gave a derisive snort and wiped his mouth. “Ah jest wish ah had me a stake,” he said. “Now ah can
feel
it! Lemme have two-dollah, Mistah Wesley, ah give it to you first thing in the mornin’ — on my way to work! Ah ain’t kiddin’ you!”

“Where you workin’ now, C.K.?” asked Wesley, winking at Harold.

“Ah ain’t
kid
you,” C.K. said crossly, but then he sighed and turned away.

“Man, ah can sure feel it now!”

He started snapping his fingers, staring at his hand, fascinated. “Ump!” He made a couple of flourishes, and his shoulders hunched up and down in quick jerks, as though because of spasms outside his control. “Ump! Man, ah hot now, ah jest had me a goddam stake!”

“Here you is, boy.”

The two bills, wadded together and soft with sweat, landed beside C.K.’s glass. He stared at them without looking up.

“Enjoy yourself,” said Big Nail, who was standing next to him and appeared to be absorbed in counting and arranging his money, a great deal of it.

C.K. picked up the crumpled notes and slowly straightened them out. “Shee-iit,” he said, and then walked over to the game, taking his bottle with him.

Blind Tom was singing:

     “De longest tra-in

     Ah evah did see

     Was one hun-red coaches long...”

Back in the game, C.K. waited for the dice, ignoring the side bets.

“Ah only put my money on a sure thing this time of day,” he said.

“Here old Crow tryin’ to make his comeback!”

“What you shootin’, C.K.?”

“Two-dollah? My, my, how the mighty have fallen!”

“You jest git in on that, boy,” said C.K. “You be havin’ all you want in a ver’ short time!”

He rattled the dice, soft and then loud, he rolled them between his palms like pieces of putty — he blew on them, spit on them, rubbed them against his crotch, he raged at them like a sadistic lover: “
Come,
you bitch, you hot mutha — hit ’em with it...
seben!
”

He made five straight passes without touching the money, and across the room Blind Tom was singing:

     “An de only gal

     Ah evah did love

     Was on dat tra-in

     An’ gone...”

“What you shootin’
now,
C.K.?”

“You lookin’ at it, daddy.”

The two dollars, doubled five times, was now over sixty — and mostly in ones, it lay scattered between them like some kind of exotic garbage.

During the delay for getting the bet covered, because no one wanted to fade him any more, C.K. kept whispering to the dice and shaking them.

“They tryin’ to cool you off, hot dice, they’s so afraid, they tryin’ to cool you off, you so hot! Lawd, ah feel you burn my hand, you so hot!

“Take all or any of it, boys,” said C.K. “Goddam, step back, ah’m comin’ out!”

“Come on out then,” said Big Nail, standing behind the first row of the players crouched around the money, “...with all of it.” And the bills fluttered down like big wet leaves.

“Shee-iit,” said C.K., not looking up, shaking the dice slowly, “you hear that, dice? Ugly ole scarface man put down his money see you natural seben...yeah, ole scar-face man pay see you natural seben...yeah, he want to see your big seben, baby,” and he shook the dice gradually, and gradually faster now, near his head, rhythmically, as though he were playing a maraca or a tambourine, and he was humming along with the sound, saying, “yeah, now you talkin’, baby, now you gittin’ it...yeah...yeah...now we comin’ out, dice, gonna show ’im the seben, gonna show ’im the ’leben,” and as he talked to the dice, his voice rose and his tone gained command until, as the dice struck the wall, he was snarling, “
Hit him you mutha-fuckin’
SEBEN!”

Two aces.

Most were relieved that C.K.’s run was broken.

“Don’t look too much like no seben to me,” said someone dryly. “Look more like the eyes of...of some kind of evil serpent!”

“Hee-hee! That’s what it look like to me too,” said another, who then called out: “Turn up the light, Mister Wesley — way it is now C.K.’s natural seben done look like ole snake-eyes!”

“You have to turn off de light ’fore that ever goin’
re-
semble a seben!”

“Hee-hee! You turn ’em off, them snake-eyes still
be
there! Gleamin’ in the dark!”

Big Nail, on his knees, slowly gathered in the money, pulling it toward him, half folding, half wadding, stuffing it into his pockets, and then he stood up.

C.K. was standing too, his glass of Lucy in one hand, gazing at the floor, shaking his head in wonder at his loss.

Big Nail looked at him once again — eyes flat and dull as a rattler’s.

“You ain’t change much — is you, boy?” he finally said.

C.K. had a sip, turned the glass in his hand, regarding it in an apparent look of appraisal.

“Well, ah don’t know,” he said softly. “They’s some people say ah ain’t — then they’s some say ah
is
— ’cause they say ah jest a little
faster
than ah use to be.”

Big Nail frowned in an odd way. “Now ah jest wonder what do they mean by that, these people tellin’ you that you so much faster than you use to be...”

“Oh they didn’t say ‘so much faster,’ they jest say ‘a little faster’ — ’cause ah was
always
pretty fast...you may recall.”

Big Nail finished his drink.

“Ah don’t think ah follow their meanin’,” he said. “Ah wonder do they mean fast like
that,
” and as he said the word, he brought his glass quickly forward against the edge of the bar, then held it, very steady, turning it slowly and regarding it, the base still firm in his hand, the edges all jagged.

Neither of them looked up at the other, and after a few seconds, Big Nail lowered the glass to the bar.

“Well, no,” said C.K., “ah would imagine — though, believe me, this is only a guess — that they was thinkin’ more along different lines,” and when he spoke, he gradually faced around to Big Nail, “ah would imagine they was thinkin’ more along...
smooth-cuttin’
lines,” and he described a wavering circle in front of him, his hand moving from his own unbroken glass toward his chest and suddenly sweeping down to his coat pocket and out with the razor — which he held then, open and poised, near his face, letting it glitter in the light, he who smiled now and looked directly into Big Nail’s eyes for the first time that day. But Big Nail had moved too — had taken a step back, and he as well was holding his straight-edged razor there, just so, between two fingers and a thumb, like a barber. Smiling.

People suddenly began leaving the bar. The crap-game broke up. Harold watched them in openmouthed amazement. Old Wesley came around the end of the bar nearest the door. “They ain’t goin’ be none of that in here!” he said grimly, holding a half-taped chisel in his hand. “You got difference, git on outside, settle you difference out there!” He stood holding the chisel uncertainly.

“You stay out of this, old man,” said Big Nail, backing out into the center of the room, “we jest havin’ us a talk here.”

Harold stood up. “C.K....,” he said, tentative and unheard.

Besides Old Wesley, Harold, and Blind Tom Ransom, there were only four other people in the bar now, and they were all carefully edging their way along the wall to the door. Outside, standing around the door and looking through the glass front of the bar, were about twenty-five people.

“Ain’t that right, C.K.?”

Ssst-sst!
Big Nail’s razor made a hissing arc that touched C.K. just along the left side of his coat, and part of it fell away.

“That’s right,” said C.K., “we jest havin’ us a friendly conversation.”
Ssst-sst!
“Big Nail tellin’ me how glad he be to git back home.”
Ssst-sst!

“Lawd God!” said someone.

“You stop it now!” said Wesley.

Outside, a woman screamed and started wailing, and one or two children began to cry.

“Mister Wesley,” Harold implored, “please stop ’em...”

“Somebody call the po-lice!”

They circled each other like cats, now in one direction, now in the other, feinting steps forward and to the side, suddenly lashing out with the five-inch blades, and all the time smiling and talking with a grotesque gentility.

“You lookin’ fit, C.K.”

Ssst-sst!

“Well, thank you, Big Nail.”
Ssst-sst!
“Ah was about to remark the same of you. Where you git that fancy white-man watch you wearin’?”

“You got to stop it now!” shouted Old Wesley. “We done call the po-lice!”

“Somebody git a gun!”

But they weren’t listening anymore, only occasionally pausing to wipe the blood from their eyes, moving slower now, even sagging a little, and they had stopped talking. Once they almost stopped moving altogether, standing about seven feet apart, their arms lower than before, each dripping blood like water from a rain-drenched shirt — and it seemed at that moment that they could both collapse.

“Well,” said Big Nail, breathing with effort, “reckon we jest as soon...do it up right.”

C.K. nodded slowly. “Reckon so...,” he said softly.

So they came together in the center of the room, for one last time, still smiling, and cut each other to ribbons.

Blind Tom Ransom, sitting on a stool inside the door, only heard it, a kind of scuffling, whistling sound, followed by a heavy swaying sigh. And he heard the clackety noise, as the razors dropped to the floor — first one, then the other — and finally the great sack-weight sound of the two men coming down, like monuments.

“It’s all ovah now,” Tom said, “all ovah now.”

But, except for Harold, there was no one to hear him; the others had all turned away from it toward the end. And they didn’t come back — only Old Wesley, to stand by the bar, his hands on his hips, shaking his head. He looked at Harold.

“Boy, you bettah git on home now,” he said gently.

But before Harold could leave, a patrol car slid up in front of the place, and Old Wesley directed the boy in through a curtained door behind the bar, as two tall white men in wide-brimmed hats got out of the car, slamming the doors, and came inside.

“What the hell’s goin’ on here, Wesley?” asked one of them, looking irately around the room and at the two bodies on the floor.

“Nothin’ goin’ on now, Officer,” said Wesley, “...them two got into argyment...there weren’t no trouble otherwise.”

“How you doin’, Blind Tom?” asked the second policeman.

“Awright, suh...who is it? Mistuh Bud Dawson?”

The first had gone over to the bodies.

“Put on some more light, Wesley...darker’n a well-digger’s asshole in here — no wonder you have so much goddam trouble.”

He turned one of the men over and put his flashlight on him.

“Goddam, they sure did it up right, didn’t they?”

The other came over and gave a low whistle, frowning down at the bodies.

“Boy, I reckon they did,” he said.

“You know ’em, Wesley?”

“Yessuh, I knows ’em.”

One of the policemen crossed to the bar and took a small notebook out of his shirt pocket. The other one got himself a beer, then went back out and sat in the patrol car.

The policeman at the bar looked up at the ceiling.

“You still ain’t got no more light in here than that?”

“Nosuh, waitin’ for my fixtures.”

The policeman gave a humorless laugh as he looked for a blank page in the notebook.

“You been waitin’ a
long
time now for them fixtures, ain’t you, Wesley?”

“Yessuh.”

“Okay, what’s their names?”