Wolf Whistle (9 page)

Alice said, “Uncle Runt?”

Runt decided he would call Fortunata, his wife. He would beg her to come back, though he did not expect her to do so. It didn't take a magic raindrop to see that sad scrap of the future. Fortunata was allergic to the parrot. Maybe if he promised to get rid of it, find it a good home, she might be enticed to come back home. Runt doubted it, but he could try.

Runt said, “I ain't partial to fortune telling.”

Alice said, “It's more like a dream, I think. I think I've got this boy on my mind, this Glenn, and so I thought about him in water, instead of fire. Like a regular dream.”

Runt said, “These Delta rivers are full of niggers, honey.”

Alice said, “Colored people?”

Runt felt sorry for Fortunata, getting mixed up with a drunken gravedigger. Long time ago Fortunata had a chance to move to Illinois, get away altogether, but she stayed with him. He wished he could have spared her falling in love with him.

Their last fight was typical, awful.

“You never—”

“You always—”

“You drunk—”

“You bitch—”

“You impotent pig—”

“You stupid whore—”

“You're drinking yourself to death, and you blame me.”

For Fortunata it was one fight too many.

At the end of the fight, Fortunata said, “You're not a bad man, Runt, you truly ain't. It's God and nature that's so damn bad.”

He would call her, he reckoned. Maybe he'd tell her don't come home, he was still digging his own grave with a whiskey bottle.

The parrot was warm on Runt's shoulder.

The rain was still falling outside the window.

Runt said, “Alice, honey, a child in a raindrop ain't a dream.”

The parrot stood up straight and stretched itself and spread out its wings arid beat them against the air and against Runt's head and face. Runt did not move, and the parrot settled down again.

Runt carried the parrot with him to the cage and put it inside and closed the wire door. He said, “I got to make that appointment I told you about.”

Sometimes a little taste to settle your insides on a rainy Delta evening was the best you could do. Sometimes that was all that was left for a man to do.

Alice said, “Well, all right, then.”

Runt said, “All right, then.”

When her uncle was gone, Alice went to the parrot's cage. She put her face to the bars of the cage. She said, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

T
HE RAIN
kept on falling, falling, falling, down onto Esequeena Street. The light in the barber shop was the only light on the street, except for the buzzard roosts, so late at night. The barber pole didn't turn, it was only a wooden pole. It shed the rain, that's about all.

There was nobody in the shop for a haircut this time of night, just Rage Gage, the barber, and a few friends, blues singers.

The light from the front window was yellow, and although it broke up a corner of the darkness and the rain with its small strength, it seemed to turn to water and to run and fade like cheap dye, once it left the window.

The house was not a real barber shop, not originally, though it had been fixed up nice. It was only a Negro cabin with a barber pole out in front of it.

Esequeena Street was lined with buzzards. Rage Gage didn't like cutting hair up underneath no bunch of buzzards. Especially buzzards named after white men. He wondered why the scientists down in Jackson couldn't be naming a few buzzards after colored people.

Ain't like they don't have plenty of buzzards to go
around. Half them buzzards ain't even got a name. That's the truth.

Rage Gage was sitting up in his own barber chair, feet propped up on the big steel footrest, talking with the boys about what happened down to Mr. Red's.

The barber chair was a good one, too—big, sturdy porcelain rascal, with a handle to pump the seat up and down and another handle to let the back down for a shave. Rage Gage needed a good adjustable chair, like this. One of his legs was shorter than the other, and so he had to wear a built-up rocking shoe on his right foot, and he wasn't very tall to begin with. It was a good chair for Rage, pump it right down to size.

Comfortable for the customer, too, steady as a stone. Bolted right in the floor, easy as pie, strop come with it, fastened to the armrest, good strop too, double leather, high quality Eye-talian cowhide, crack like a whip when you put a razor to it.

Rage Gage bought this chair long time ago down at Swami Don's Elegant Junk, fifteen dollars, cash money, that's what it cost, lot of jack, Jack, but twice as nice at half the price, go easy, Greasy, you got a long way to slide.

The chair had a real leather seat cushion built right in, ox-blood in color, faded, well sure, used like this, it's gone be faded some, good and broke in, that's why it's faded, so that was okay, wont even cracked, good chair, fine chair,
fifteen dollars cash, that's all, a bargain, a steal, well sure it's expensive, ain't nobody said it was cheap, but worth it, sho, worth every red cent.

Used to have it over on Fourth Street, whole shop, chair and everything, combs, clippers, scissors, pomade trays, straight razors, straightening irons, shaving mugs, shaving brushes, bay rum, clothes brush, shampoo, dandruff treatment, louse dip, hot rocks to rub old men's froze-up balls with, fully equipped barber services, next! who's next! step right up, ain't nothing to be skeered of, I hope you ain't wanting one them new do's we be seeing in
Ebony
, get yo throat cut wearing one them do's in Arrow Catcher, let me slop on some of this here White Rose, give you that shiny petroleum-jelly look they's talking so much about in Paris, France, plaster that nappy got-damn rag of yore's down on yo field-nigger Ubangi-ass haid.

Somebody said, “That Chicago boy got off lucky, what I say.”

Somebody else said, “Uh-huh.”

The one-handed monkey was there, as usual, sitting in one of the empty theater seats, with the stuffing coming out of the seat bottoms. The monkey was holding last Sunday's funny paper up in front of his face like he was reading it. The monkey was real old and had gray hair on his head and face and armpits. It had learned a long time ago to balance
one edge of a folded newspaper on its little stump of a hand and to hold the other edge with the good hand. He didn't act like no handicapped monkey.

Blue John Jackson was there, the blues man, from out in the country. He was tall and a little stooped and had a gravelly voice. He had quit drinking whiskey and smoking cigarettes a long time ago, but his voice still sounded like a whiskey drinker. About all he ever drank now was a whole heap of strong coffee, with a little sweetmilk.

Blue John brought his guitar over to the barber shop most every night since Rage Gage moved his business from Fourth Street. Blue John played “The Spoonful” sometimes, and “Little Bo Peep” and “Corrina, Corrina,” if you axed him just right.

Just then the little redheaded peckerwood Roy Dale Conroy, the gravedigger's child, come easing in, white boy with a strange way about him, done snuck out of his daddy's house again, in the middle of the night.

Roy Dale said, “Hey, Rage Gage.”

Rage Gage said, “Hey, Peckerwood.”

Roy Dale had a timid little voice.

He said, “Y' all blowing?”

Rage Gage said, “Git one them dry towels off the sink rack.”

Roy Dale took a couple of thin-cloth shaving towels off a
rack on the double sink in the middle of the floor and dried off his face and hair. Then he rubbed his neck and arms good, too.

Blue John said to Roy Dale, “She'll come back. She'll come back some day.”

Roy Dale said, “I don't know.”

Blue John said, “She will.”

Roy Dale eased into the empty theater seat next to the one-handed monkey. The monkey looked up and saw Roy Dale and recognized him and put the newspaper aside and crawled over the chair arm and into his lap and wrapped his tail around in a circle and cuddled up close to Roy Dale's chest.

Roy Dale took off first one shoe and then the other, and then he took off his stretched-out argyle socks, and laid them out on top of the cold space heater to dry out a little.

Roy Dale was missing his mama, that was true enough.

Roy Dale said, “I heard about what happened, down at Mr. Red's.”

Rage Gage said, “Where'd you hear about that?”

Roy Dale said, “Schoolyard.”

Rage Gage said, “Ain't no telling how news be traveling.”

Roy Dale said, “I own know.”

Rage Gage said, “Well—”

There were two other people in the room. One was The
Rider, the frail, frail little albino blues man, with white nappy hair and pink skin. His eyes were always covered up with dark glasses, like blind people wear. He walked into walls. He played a Gibson guitar, which he didn't need to see. Blue John Jackson claimed he couldn't play a lick of the blues without The Rider alongside him, he took him everywhere he went.

The other person in the barber shop was the old shoeshine boy from Red's Goodlookin Bar and Gro., Rufus McKay, who slept all day and woke up singing songs from a former time.

Rufus McKay said to Rage Gage, “How come you be letting white trash set around in your house?”

Rage said to Roy Dale, “Jefferson Davis been missing you, Face.”

Sometimes he called Roy Dale Peckerwood, sometimes he called him Face. Jefferson Davis was the name of the monkey.

Roy Dale was a little scared of Rufus McKay. Rufus was tall and skinny and mean. Roy Dale didn't look up, he just petted the little monkey sitting on his lap.

Rufus McKay said, “You so worried about buzzards ain't be named Diphtheria Jean Johnson and Bessie Smith, and you go name your own monkey after a white man. And then let him sit in the lap of a piece of white trash. Give that monkey cooties.”

Roy Dale said, “Fuck you, Rufus.”

Rufus said, “I got a razor in my shoe, you little peckerwood motherfucker, I'll cut your little white-trash, crackerass throat.”

Roy Dale said, “You and whose monkey?”

The Rider, behind his dark glasses, laughed that good old albino blues-man laugh, heh, heh, heh, and never changed his expression. He strummed on his guitar, thrum, thrum, thrum. His white eyebrows showed above the top of his shades.

Blue John Jackson started tuning his guitar,
poing poing poing,
one string at a time.

Rage Gage said, “Hand me my box, Face, out the corner.”

Roy Dale got up from the old theater seat, which sprung up behind him, and carried the monkey over to Rage Gage's guitar and gave the guitar to Rage and went and sat back down with Jefferson Davis again.

Blue John had his box pretty well tuned by now. He was strumming the top end, sounded like a bell ringing.

Rufus McKay said, “See how this piece of trash talk to me? What if that little Chicago nigger be talking trash like that?”

Rage Gage was in tune now, too. He started to sing a song he had written about getting evicted from his barber shop on Fourth Street.

Blue John Jackson was playing a melody, soft and complex and beautiful, above the simple words, while The Rider was playing an eight-note backbeat, boogie-woogie. The Rider learned to play backup in New Orleans, and so he thought a song wasn't no song without a backbeat.

Rufus McKay said, “Black chile talk to a white man like this little piece of trash be talking to me, I hate to think what be done happen.”

Rage Gage sang about the shop on Fourth Street, a place he called his own.

Jefferson Davis loved tunes, the monkey. He turned around in Roy Dale's lap and sat facing the guitars. Roy Dale had to push his tail down out of his face so he could blow on the harp that Blue John handed him.

Blue John was running a few quiet riffs, and The Rider was backing him up.

Rufus McKay said, “Like this mawning. Little Chicago nigger be lucky he don't get throwed in the river.”

Roy Dale said, “My Cousin Alice seen it in a raindrop.”

Nobody said anything. Roy Dale went back to petting the monkey. He put Blue John's harmonica aside.

Rage Gage was singing about being evicted from his old barber shop and having to move into the Belgian Congo in the shadow of a flock of buzzards.

The Rider looked at Rufus McKay and nodded agreement, though he didn't stop playing the guitar. His left
hand kept moving steadily up and down the neck of the guitar, his fingers lightly touching the frets to make the changes.

Blue John Jackson kept on playing his more intricate part, and he looked up at Rufus McKay as well.

Rage Gage sang around the rain and the buzzards and Vardaman and Bilbo and Ross Barnett and the scientists down in Jackson. Somehow, in this song, they were all to blame for Rage's being evicted from his shop on Fourth Street.

There was another break, and more guitars.

Rufus McKay said, “Anything happen to that boy, it's on the head of the white trash. Gravedigger be standing right on the scene, just smacking his lips, he got him some work now, look like.”

Everybody knew he was talking about Roy Dale's daddy.

The music kept on. Rage Gage didn't sing a whole verse, just a line or two thrown in now and then.
Oh trouble, trouble, trouble.
Then more guitars.

Blue John Jackson said, “What'd you do about it, Rufus?” He looked back down at his strings, to help him through the riff.

The Rider leaned over close to Blue John and seemed to whisper something, though no one else could hear it.

Rufus McKay said, “Ain't nothing to do.”

Blue John said, “Peckerwood's daddy walked down in the Belgian Congo, looking for him, couldn't find him.”

Rage Gage sang that he always knew he wasn't going to get treated fair.

Blue John Jackson said, “White-trash gravedigger went looking for him. What'd you do, Rufus? Act like you's asleep and singing show tunes?”