The Spyglass Tree (18 page)

I was thinking about how whenever you talked to him about anything like that, you were in touch with somebody who was always ready to find out something else about customs, manners, and methods because as a student of architecture he was always involved with matters of design, construction, and engineers, and playing around with stage sets and puppet shows was as much a
hobby with him as building and flying model airplanes and assembling and operating ham radios.

Then Skeeter had put the finishing touches on Red Gilmore, and it was my turn and I was sitting in the chair and being swung around toward the wall where all of the pictures, placards, and notices were and along with the chatter and laughter of the ongoing conversation, there was the also and also of clippers buzzing, scissors snipping, and also of shampoo and skin lotion and talcum powder and tobacco smoke, and outside there was the damp, overcast almost-spring weather, and you could also hear the droning and beeping traffic in that part of the morning on that part of the campus thoroughfare.

I looked at all of the long since familiar pictures of Jack Johnson and Peter Jackson and Joe Gans and Sam Langford and of Satchel Paige and Josh Gipson and Buck Leonard and Cool Papa Bell and of such entertainers as Bojangles Robinson and Charlie Chaplin and Bert Williams. Just when I came to the band leaders, I stopped and tried to shut everything out because I did not not want to start thinking about Hortense Hightower that early on in the day that I was going back to see her again, and when I opened my eyes and ears again, the talk was about politics and Deke Whatley had the floor.

He had a freshman in his chair then, and as usual he was working and talking with a short stump of a dead cigar in his mouth, his gold crowns showing as he clamped it in a way that reminded me of how some people hold a coffee cup or a drinking glass with that little finger extended, which is exactly what he did when he took the cigar out of his mouth from time to time.

Red Gilmore was sitting on the shoe-shine stand by the door that led to the back hallway and the toilet. He had the morning paper open and folded to a pad, working on a crossword puzzle as he waited for the bootblack to come in. The others sat listening to
Deke Whatley, who kept the clippers in his right hand all during the time that he was doing more talking than hair trimming.

Politics. Politics. Politics, he said. You want to know something about politics? I can tell you something about some goddamn politics. In the first place, it really don’t take all that much. It really dont. It don’t take a thing but some plain old horse sense mixed in with a little grade A bullshit, and of course you got to have some nerve, too, because how you going to bullshit if you ain’t got no nerve. A good politician got the nerve of a brass-ass monkey
.

I can tell you something about some politics because I been watching that business for a long time. I been studying that business and watching what some somitches doing so I’m talking about something I know from experience and mother wit. If you want to get somewhere in this mans world, you got to know how to play yourself some politics. That’s a fact. Don’t give a damn what nobody say. I’m telling you like it sure butt is as sure as you born. They supposed to be teaching them up yonder on the quadrangle, democracy and all of that no taxation without representation jive. You know what democracy is? I am going to tell you exactly what democracy is: playing politics. That’s all it is. That’s all it ever was and ever was intended to be and ever will be. Everybody playing politics. Everybody in there trying to get his little taste. You can say anything you want to, but you ain’t never seen no somitch yet and you ain’t never going to see one that wasn’t out there for what he can get. Hell, ain’t nobody going to admit it. Goddamn! old pardner, that’s just what I’m telling about: horse sense
.

He was into another one of his sermons then, as almost always happened when somebody said something academic about freedom and justice for all. He couldn’t stand to hear anybody talk about the Constitution as if it were the Holy Bible. To him it was a document that was used for making deals and that was about all it was intended to be.

Ain’t nobody but a fool or some old aristocrat going to be going around saying I’m all for me and to hell with you. You don’t have to have no sense
at all to know better than that. Hell, that other somitch is out there for hisself too. And ain’t no goddamn body going to think more of you than he do his own fucking self. Goddamn, gentlemen, and that’s how come I know I don’t really understand most of these old white folks to save my life. You see what I mean? You see what I’m driving at? Goddamn redneck somitch think they going to make you want to treat them better than you do your own precious goddamn self. Man, don’t nobody come before me, not in my own heart and soul. You follow this stuff. That’s something your goddamn dingdong is always telling you. That’s all that somitch down there between your goddam legs ever know: me, me, me
.

But now let me tell you something about them old aristocrats. When you come right down to it, that ain’t nothing but the special few playing politics up there in the high society circles around the king. And don’t care how bad-ass the king hisself is, he also got to be working some smooth jive to stay where he is and then if he really got his shit jumping, he can make hisself the goddamn emperor
.

You see what I mean? And that’s another thing we got to realize, too. I’m talking about us now. Ain’t no mufkin white somitch going to give you nothing he don’t have to. I’m talking about life now, cousin. This ain’t no Sunday school out here. You got to get your ass out there and politic with them. Politic the hell out of them. You just find a way to get in there and dangle enough votes in front of one of them and he’ll bring you your little taste, too. See if he don’t. That’s all it is. Everybody getting their little taste and that other fellow getting his little taste, too. That’s what the king and them aristocrats forgot and that’s how come so many of them wound up losing their hat, ass, and gas mask. You don’t have to have no Ph.D. to dig that. Me, all I ever had was a little old country RFD myself, and I damn sure know it
.

All right, now, you take Cat Rogers for instance. Take Cat Rogers right here in this county. You know why he can kick all them black asses and get away with it? Not so much because he so goddamn badass, although he
is
as badass as almost any somitch I know. You got to admit that. Cat Rogers is one more badass peckerwood, gentlemen. I ain’t joking That’s one
out-and-out badass somitch on his own, starbadge or no starbadge. Don’t let nobody fool you. That redneck somitch will pull off that goddamn badge and pistol in a minute just on general principles. You want to make it something personal? That’s all right with him. But that ain’t how come he can get away with it, because I know some badass boot somitches just as bad as he is, when you come right down to that. But he can get away with it and they can’t because them that puts him in charge of the county jail lets him have his leeway, because it keeps things in line so they can keep their little taste coming like it always has. All this stuff is logic, gentlemen. You got to dig the logic of this stuff. Now get this. When these goddamn crybabies gang around talking about Cat Rogers this and Cat Rogers that, I tell them when you get yourself enough votes to get rid of Cat Rogers, you won’t even have to get rid of him because he going to be seeing to it that you getting your little taste just like everybody else. Now that’s politics, pardner, and that’s what democracy is all about. Don’t care what they got in them books up there
.

Then he said, Say boy, goddamn! Is your head shaped like this or is I’m cutting it like this? And everybody laughed and he stood back looking at the freshman’s head as if he couldn’t believe it was real.

Boy, you got the goddamndest head I ever seen in all my born days.

Everybody kept on laughing and the freshman was laughing, too. There was nothing wrong with his head and he knew it. Deke Whatley swung the chair around so that he could look out to the sidewalk and then he turned it so that the freshman could see himself in the mirror and then he want on talking in another tone of voice.

What’s your name, son?

The freshman told him.

Where you from?

Birmingham.

You from the Ham?

Yes, sir.

What part of the Ham you from?

The freshman told him.

Goddamn, boy, you ought to
know
something if you come from the Ham. You know old Joe Ramey up in the ’ham?

Yes, sir.

Old Joe the Pro.

Yes, sir.

Boy, you know something. You supposed to know something. That goddamn Joe Ramey is the greatest cat in the world, boy. What’d you say your name was?

The freshman told him again.

Well, boy, if you know Joe Ramey, you know one hell of a cat. Hey, this boy is all right. Mark my words, gentlemen.

Hey, what the hell does this Joe Ramey do, Deke? Govan Edwards asked. He was not waiting his turn. He was there because the barbershop was one of the places he liked to drop in on several times a week. I knew him as a sports fan but I was never quite sure what he did for a living.

Do? Man, that goddamn Joe Ramey can do just about anything he want to. You know him, don’t you, Red?

Who, Joe Ramey? Do I know Joe Ramey!

The door opened and Showboat Parker, cab number nine, the only Cadillac taxi in town, stuck his head in and said, Hey, in here, and came on in pushing the door shut behind him and leaning back against it as he checked to see who all was present.

I said, Hey in here, he said, and somebody said, Shoby, and somebody else said, What say Shoby, and somebody else said, What’s happening Shoby, and he said, Man, ain’t nothing happening, and this is the weather for it. What’s the matter with these people? and somebody said, The day is still young, give them time, Shoby. But you must have picked up some kind of news out there.

Man, ain’t no news, he said. White folks still out in front that’s all I can tell you. And when Pete Carmichael said, Well that
sure God ain’t no news, he said, You goddamn right it ain’t. Us white folks so far ahead of you cotton-picking granny dodgers, it ain’t even funny no more. And when Pop Collins said, Hell, it ain’t never been funny, he said, Hell, it better not be funny. What the fuck, you’d think this is. This ain’t no goddamn vaudeville. This is life in the nitty goddamn gritty. You goddamn people always laughing too much anyhow.

Hey, wait a minute now, Deke Whatley said, holding up his clippers, Hey now hold on there because that ain’t the way I heard it. The way my grandpappy told me, all that grinning and laughing is a part of our African mother wit, because the first thing our African forefathers found out after they realized that all them hungry-looking peckerwoods was not going to eat them was that if you didn’t grin at them, white folks would be scared shitless of us all the goddamn time and ain’t no telling what they might do. My old grandpa told me, if you ain’t got nothing but a stick and a brick, you don’t go around making somebody nervous that’s got cannon and a Gatling gun.

Then he said, But now tell me this. If white folks so far out in front, how come they spend so much time worrying about what we doing? They supposed to have everything already nailed up and they always coming up with another one of these books to prove that we too dumb to figure out how to get it unnailed.

You got me the answer for that? he said, and Showboat Parker said, Now come on, Deacon, you know good and well that us white folks don’t have to account to the likes of y’all for nothing we do. It ain’t for y’all to understand how come us white folks doing anything. We just want y’all to learn how to read well enough to know your place, and we got a million-dollar school right here to teach you.

They were all laughing again then, and he said, What say there, Red Boy? What say, Skeets and the rest of y’all?

Skeeter swirled the chair, and you could see them in the
mirror. Showboat sat in Sack McBride’s empty chair and leaned back, crossing his legs and folding his hands over his taxi driver’s paunch, his cap tipped down over his eyes.

Where were you last night, Red Boy?

Trying to get somewhere and do myself some good, man, Red Gilmore told him.

The boys missed you.

Man, I couldn’t make it. Not from where I was last night.

The stuff was there.

How’d you make out?

Man, me, I ain’t held a decent hand yet.

What about Old Saul?

Aw, man, they cleaned Old Saul Baker out way before midnight. Man, Old Saul was probably home in bed by midnight last night.

How about Giles?

Man, don’t say nothing to me about no Giles Cunningham. Old Giles, hunh?

That goddamn Giles Cunningham is one of the gamblingess somitches in the world today.

Old Giles checked them to the locks, hunh?

I believe that somitch would have broke the Federal Reserve last night, man.

Old Giles.

Talking about hot, goddamn but that somitch was hot last night.

Yancey got them tonight?

Yeah.

That’s what I thought. I guess I might peep me a few of them myself this evening.

You welcome to it, Red. But me, man, the hell with some old poker tonight. Man, I know something else I can do with my little change beside giving it to that goddamn Giles Cunningham.