A Cry of Angels (18 page)

"Shoot," he said, bringing out frozen Pepsis, "I got better things to waste my money on."

"One thing about a fair," Em said, "every year they get new gals."

"They looked pretty old to me," I said.

"That's 'cause you don't know nothin' 'bout it. Ah, that big blonde was sump'n else." Em struck a match and looked in his wallet. "Two dollars. That'll do." He got up and dusted his pants. "You kids play nice and don't fight," and he shambled off down the road.

"Where's he off to now?" said Tio.

"Deva's place, I guess. The carnival gals got him all tore up. Tio, have you ever—done it?"

"Done what?"

"You know, with a girl.

Oh, hundreds of times."

"Yeh, well, you must have
seen it done
."

"How come I must have seen it done?"

"Well, you know, they say black people do it a lot.

Not around me they don't. How about you?"

"Now, who's going to be doing it at the boardinghouse!"

"Yeah, I see what you mean." Tio chuckled. "I'll bet you could see it down at Deva's place. Bet they're doing it right out in the yard!"

"You ever been down there?"

"Just once. One Halloween night me and Skeeter and Carlos slipped down and spread a bucket of fish under the house.
Hooo
—by the time they found 'em you could smell that place two blocks away!"

"Wish you wouldn't talk about that," I said.

"What's the matter?"

"Ate some bad hot dogs at the fair." I swigged on the Pepsi. "Look," I said, "let's just go down to Deva's and have ourselves a look."

"You mean it?"

"Damn right! We been ignorant long enough. Here I done messed around pickin' up bits and pieces, and before I can get it all straight, things are startin' to run backwards. I've heard the talk and seen the pictures, now I'm gonna see it myself and get it clear."

Up to that time I myself had never ventured closer to Deva's than the corner, when I followed Em down one night. It was in the most notorious section of the Ape Yard, and the fights and carryings on were legend. But it was the only whorehouse in town where Em was welcome. A group of white women plied an informal trade at the Gibbs Hotel, but Em hadn't been allowed in there since the night he got drunk and tore up the lobby and three paying customers. Besides, Em was a bit shabby, even for the Gibbs, and he was dark enough to make the girls uneasy. Actually, he said, he was more comfortable at Deva's, and there was a big black woman named Mae who wore a red wig and hadn't any shame at all!

Once in the cindered alley beside the two-story house, we set about plotting the best way to get in. The front parlor was full of people, but they weren't doing anything but sitting and drinking and talking. "What's goin' on is goin' on up there," said Tio, pointing to the second-floor windows.

"Maybe we could slip in the back door."

Tio opened it and peeked in, then put his fingers to his lips and motioned me back outside. "People in the hall," he said. He thought he could climb the vines up the back porch, but they were rotten and he fell in the yard with both hands full of brittle stems and dead flowers. He was ready to call it quits. "I ain't bustin' my back breakin' in no whorehouse."

"Naw, we can't quit now," I said. "You got to try something else."

"What you mean I got to try? I don't see you doin' no tryin'! You're the one wantin' to see it in the first place. I've seen dogs do it; that convinces me. You're the one wantin' all the facts; seem like to me you ought to be the one doin' some climbin'!" Tio pulled himself sullenly on a parked fender. "Git somebody
killed
!"

As we sat and thought about it a knife fight broke out across the street and men in bloody shirts were chasing one another up the road. The people in Deva's place piled out onto the front porch and milled in the yard.

Tio jumped down off the car. "Now's our chance!" We ran to the back door and into the hall and tiptoed up the stairs. The house was surprisingly similar to Miss Esther's. There was a single bulb burning at the head of the stairs, and as we got there a door opened down the hall. We made ourselves small behind a chifforobe. A young woman came out and led a man down the stairs.

We stopped at a couple of doors and listened, but heard nothing. Then we heard noises from the end of the hall. Tio looked at me and nodded. We crept to the door and listened, and knew we had found what we were looking for. That bed was in a lot of pain.

Tio slowly turned the knob and was easing the door open when a voice behind us boomed like a cannon.

"Whut is
dis
!"

She was enormous, a heavy-jowled black woman in a tent of shimmering yellow. I couldn't get over the size of that dress, and bright to hurt your eyes. Tio was the first to recover. "Hey, Miss Deva," he said, striking a broad grin.

"What the very—how'd you all get in here!"

Tio stayed cool. Hooking thumbs in his belt, he said, "Just lookin' around. Say, uh, you wouldn't have anything our size, would you?

I'll give you sump'n yo' size!" And next I knew she had us both by the collar and we were being carried down the stairs, our toes barely touching the carpet. When we reached the kitchen she plunked us in chairs and took a seat at the head of the table. Propping her heavy elbows on the oilcloth she aimed a finger at Tio. "Right now, mister, whut's this all about? And gimme that much sass and I'll jerk a knot in yo' tail."

Tio swallowed. "Well," he said, glancing at me, "we were just looking . . ."

"Looking for Jojohn," I blurted out.

"Who?" Deva jangled her plastic bracelets and leaned closer. "Lookin' for who?"

"Jojohn. Em Jojohn."

"Big Em? The Indian?"

"Yes, ma'am. But we can see he ain't here, so . . ."

I was interrupted by a man in a pin-striped suit rushing into the kitchen. He leaned down and whispered something in Deva's ear. Her face changed to sudden alarm. She said something quickly and the man nodded and left. "You two don't budge," she said, and she was up and gone.

Tio and I looked at each other and started to ease up from the table, but the cook racked a boiling kettle to the edge of the stove and shook her head.

"You heard what Miss Deva said."

We sat back down.

"Fine mess," Tio said, "just fine."

A moment later Deva returned, followed by Em Jojohn. "Come on," he said, "move."

"Em, we didn't mean to cause no trouble . . ."

"No time. No time. Trouble comin'—move!" He jerked us up from the table and shoved us out the back door. As we hit the yard a pair of headlights swung in from the street. Em dived, and the three of us went over the low wall as the headlights washed the yard. "Lay flat and don't make a sound," he said.

The car killed its lights and slid to a stop among the other parked cars. Instantly, those milling about disappeared. The yard was deserted and quiet. Wherever that dark green Continental went in the Ape Yard it trailed a wake of silence. It announced the presence of "Doc" Harley Bobo.

Doc Bobo was the town's black undertaker, and one of the wealthiest and most powerful men, black or white, in Pollard County. In addition to the cotton mill, he owned almost all of the residential property in the Ape Yard, plus the Starlite Cafe and the other four shops and taverns clustered at the foot of the hill below Mr. Teague's in the place called Cabbage Alley. It was rumored that Doc Bobo also had money in white-owned businesses uptown, particularly the loan company, an insurance agency and a used-car lot that catered heavily to black trade. It was said that no business was conducted in the Ape Yard without Doc Bobo being involved somewhere in the transaction. Hit-and-run solicitors such as home-improvement outfits, lawn-furniture salesmen, and itinerant peddlers of books, kitchenware and mail-order clothes, who normally do well in black communities, all found doors closed to them until they got directed to the two-story white funeral home with the blue neon clock sign set back behind the willows and magnolias on a spacious, well-kept lawn on Oglethorpe Street. Then, if they met with Doc Bobo's approval, one of his men went out to ride with them as they made calls, and they did a booming business.

During the war Doc Bobo was the source of supply for anything on the black market, and when the county went dry, Doc became the most reliable purveyor of quality moonshine. Most of his operations were thought to be confined to the Ape Yard, but when a hot-car ring that had operated in northeast Georgia for over two years was broken, it was traced to a garage on the Little Iron River. Thirteen blacks were arrested and the case was closed. Some of the families got monthly checks. Local officials saw no reason to get involved.

Doc Bobo was highly respected among influential whites. He often boasted that Pollard County had the highest level of registered black voters in the state, and it was understood that the political faction doing business with Bobo got a bloc of several thousand extra voters standing hat in hand on election day. It was Doc Bobo who was photographed with the governor breaking ground for the new Negro school; who bustled into the school auditorium the night of the Community Chest drive, gold tooth agleam, bearing the buckets of coins that represented the Ape Yard's contribution; and who gave soothing talks to the civic clubs.

Cruising the streets in his dark green limousine, his diamonds glinting in the sun, Doc Bobo was a calming influence to the town's white people. The law wasn't needed in the Ape Yard. Doc Bobo kept the peace. His "dog boys" were on patrol. If a crime was committed anywhere of which a black man was suspected, the sheriff simply picked up the phone. The next day a black man was in jail. Or dead.

To those blacks on the raw underside of that calm, he was not a man but a force, a presence as awesome as evil itself.

The door of Doc Bobo's green Continental opened and the splendidly built black giant, Clyde Fay, stepped out, tugged his cap down to his Roman nose, and moved across the yard to the shadows of the house with the flowing grace of a dancer, which he was said to have been at one time.

Presently another car came down the road and turned in at Deva's, a battered Plymouth with fins and a torn and squeaking fender. Several black men got out laughing and talking among themselves, quarry ledgehands, judging from their leather caps and dusty overalls. One of them carried a large paper sack.

As they started for the house a horn sounded—one sharp blast from the Continental—and they stopped. A shadow was moving along the house; it stopped between them and the door. The door opened momentarily and Clyde Fay was framed in the square. The men saw him and froze. The door quickly closed again. The men dropped back and began moving away, all but the one with the sack.

The man left facing Fay began shaking like a terrified child, whining. He started backing away. He backed into the grille of the Continental and stopped. He was murmuring something, pleading. Fay moved toward him, slowly, and as he drew closer the other man suddenly cried out and snatched something from the bag. A bottle of beer whirled past Fay's head and crashed against the wall. The man broke right, but with a single bound Fay was in front of him again. The man dodged again, and again, and each time Fay cut him off. In panic the man threw another bottle, missing Fay's head by inches. Another.

Then something peculiar happened: the Continental's lights came on! They shone directly in Fay's face, blinding him. Then I heard laughter from the limousine. Doc Bobo was playing a game.

Fay's lips spread in a wide grin, and as the bottles shot at him from the darkness he continued to dodge them with no more than a swift movement of a shoulder, a flick of the head. Cursing hoarsely, the man hurled bottle after bottle, each time the bottles missing their mark and bursting and foaming down the wall. When the bag was emptied the man screamed and broke to run, but instantly Fay was on him. He threw him against the house and went to work.

The house and the street were deathly quiet; in trancelike horror I listened to the man's back thumping against the boards with each precisioned blow that Fay, standing straight, delivered to his middle. Each strike was slow and measured, and it seemed Fay would never stop. Offering no resistance, the man stood with his eyes tightly closed, emitting tiny squeaking noises like a rubber doll when it's squeezed, enduring it more like a necessary operation than the wanton brutality that it was. And it was that, the acceptance of it, that was most horrible of all. When the man started to vomit blood Fay stepped away and delivered a final blow to his temple that sent him spinning to the ground.

Fay stopped to examine his sleeves in the headlights before getting into the car. He started the engine and the Continental pulled out of the yard.

The only movement was from the crumpled pile of overalls on the ground by the chimney, where the dying man lay drawing his knees up in agony.

And only a glimpse of that, for I was being lifted bodily in the air, and with Tio under one arm and me under the other, Em Jojohn was pounding across the stubble field toward home.

By the first of March the house in Marble Park was finished, a fact that was obvious to everyone, it seems, but Jayell Crooms. He still had Em and the older shop boys on the premises from dawn to dark, and expected the rest of us to keep coming directly from school, although there was little to do but tap and scrape, carry bits of lumber from here to there, and try to look busy enough not to get yelled at. When Jayell did turn up a bit of real work, we fell on it like a pack of terriers after a rat.

The Hendersons next door, who at first looked with suspicion on the crew of black boys, gradually fell into the spirit of the surprise for Gwen, and the spirit Jayell always seemed to create around anything he was building, and eventually they began supplying us with cookies and iced tea. They were now asking daily if Jayell was ready for Gwen to see the place yet. They wanted to have a house-warming party. Thelma Martin from down the street was bursting with excitement. She and the other teachers were planning showers.