On
the last night that Daddy and me ever went to Noogies together,
there was no
band playing on the
tiny stage next to the piano. But that didn't matter none anyhow
because with the folks all packed together like chickens in a coop
on slaughter day, there wasn't any elbow room on the dance floor
to dance fast or crazy-like on account that yesterday was pay day
at the sawmill. As such, Noogies was chock-full with all sorts of
folks bent on whooping it up till early morning. Although Daddy and
me never stayed as late as those folks, after a Noogies
night we never made it to church with Mama the next morning neither.
"When you get older, Davey," Daddy always
told
me, "go easy because the town will always be there for your next port call
too." He
said that was what his old Senior Chief used to say from his Navy days when their
ship hit dockside at Subic Bay—those days, of course, was from way before
I was born and he hadn't even met Mama yet. And I guess it was also Daddy's way
of saying what Father Mathew preached in his Sunday sermons: Practice moderation
in all things, and don't be a Philistine.
So as Daddy went to the bar to get himself a beer
and me a Dr. Pepper, I gaped about at the dance floor, and I noticed that most
of the folks weren't taking heed on practicing moderation. If Grammy had seen
the red-haired lady sprawled back on the jukebox getting her titties squeezed
and kissed on by a runtish man wearing a purple porkpie hat and sawdusted dungarees
falling off his butt—with him all frolicking on her with his lizard tongue
and making her jump and squeal so the Little Richard record skipped every time
he
reached down below and goosed her one—well, Grammy would have shouted that
they
were practicing fornication in all things, surely not moderation.
Lord All Mighty, but I sure did gawk at her chalky-white flesh until Daddy handed
me
a Dr. Pepper and shoved me along to the backroom for card playing.
Through the steel door's opening we passed into
the windowless backroom. Dadgum, it'd be faster to chop through the wall with
fire axes then to try to kick through that steel door when it was barred shut
from the inside—the funny part is that nobody remembers why that steel
door is there. And if smells had an edge to 'em, then the backroom at Noogies
smelled
like a switchblade knife stabbed into road kill. On entering the room, my first
reaction was to always hold my breath for a few seconds. Poker sure ain't for
ladies.
Four men were in the middle of a poker hand. They
sat surrounding a smattering of crumpled up one-dollar bills and some coins that
were more or less centered in the middle of the oak table. And then I saw that
one of the card players was Junior Crump, drinking some kind of bronzish potion
from a half empty mason jar, slur-mouthed and salt-eyed as he flicked down four
cards and scooped up his replacements dealt out by Bill Tollerman. Junior Crump's
remaining unchawed Redman plug was plunked down on top of his coins and bills
as if his pay day weekend money were fixing to run off.
Not a particularly pleasant man when sober, as
Daddy says about Junior Crump, whose disposition goes even further south in direct
proportion to the amount of moonshine running around in his brain. Junior Crump
worked at the sawmill and still had all of his fingers, and I understand that's
real good for that job although his eyesight was failing on account of the wood
chips always flying in his face. As such, Junior Crump's eyes always leaked like
a sweating RC Cola glass at Maynard's Soda Fountain. Me and his son Jimmy had
been classmates for a year-and-a-half, ever since the Crumps had moved to Monroe
from the deep piney country. Now Jimmy and me were nowheres near being best friends,
but he treated me decent enough when the cigarette smoking kids weren't around.
But lately it seemed like I couldn't get away from
those Crumps, because now, by golly, sitting across the table from Junior Crump
sat ol' Fisherman Nate. Bad enough that this was a mixed game featuring Junior
Crump: two whites, two coloreds—plus us. But maybe even worse was that earlier
in the day me and Jimmy Crump had gone fishing together at Colver Lake, and Jimmy
had a run in with ol' Nate about fishing rights. Jimmy threw some rocks at ol'
Nate's dink to make him row away from our spot, calling the old man "a coon-assed
nigger" to boot. And then I think later, after I left Jimmy there alone,
Jimmy stole ol' Nate's catch and then gave 'em to Mama as if I had caught 'em.
But
that's another story.
Those Crumps. Daddy once said that their kind sure
colored the notion that traditional-minded men folks have to always stick together.
"I'll raise y'all by five," Junior Crump
said, dropping two one-dollar bills and a trickle of what was supposed to be
three
dollars worth of coins into the pot.
Bill Tollerman, Reggie Smith, and ol' Nate were
still holding cards in their hands, looking at the money Junior Crump plopped
down after picking up a four card draw. Now I know for a fact that Daddy likes
to leave the table when the five dollar bets start appearing around just before
midnight or so, and here it was barely an hour after sundown with Junior Crump
betting like a cracker at a Snake Town cock fight. The two other men folded,
but ol' Nate carefully counted out five one-dollar bills and placed them into
the pot.
"I call, Mr. Crump."
Junior Crump chawed a bit on his tobacco and swallowed
a gob—he wasn't no spitter—squinting at the pile of money while placing his
cards face down on the table.
"Y'all cain't call cuz I'm gonna raise another
ten."
And then Junior Crump stood up so he could get
out
his wallet even though he had more than ten dollars already visible underneath
his plug of Redman chaw. He then snapped out a crisp ten-dollar bill and placed
it square dab on top of the pot with Alexander Hamilton facing ol' Nate head
on.
"That ain't the way it works, Junior, and
you know
it," Bill Tollerman said. And since he was not only the card dealer on the
hand
but also a foreman down at the sawmill, I guess he should be heeded.
Junior Crump worked his chaw like he had extra
muscles in his cheeks popping out underneath his beard, looking back and forth
between Bill Tollerman and ol' Nate, some trickles of sweat running down from
the bald part on top of his head and then trapped by his furry eyebrows. Finally
he turned towards me and winked but then turned back again towards ol' Nate while
saying, "How was your catfish, Davey-boy?"
My cheeks got hot as if I were gonna start sweating
like Junior Crump, although I'd be sweating for a different reason than he was.
So Jimmy did steal the catfish from ol' Nate!
I couldn't bring my eyes to look directly
at ol' Nate, but I could tell he wasn't looking at me neither. Like everybody
else, his gaze was fixed on Junior Crump.
"Davey's catch was mighty tasty, Junior," Daddy
said. "I sure wish Jimmy could have joined us for dinner."
"Maybe on a Friday, catlicker," Junior
Crump said, working another gob of chaw down his gullet and then snatching back
his ten-dollar
bill from the pot along with two extra one-dollar bills to boot. "Seeing
as this
was a disputed hand, seems fair that the winner buys a round for everybody." And
he walked out to the bar, leaving his money pile and tobacco plug, never bothering
to show his cards nor caring to see what ol' Nate held neither.
I looked at Daddy. I knew he was a Baptist at heart,
but he converted to Catholicism so he and Mama could get married up in her church
in Baltimore. As such, Daddy seemed fine, sipping his beer and lighting up a
horse-dick stogie. I guess it took more than a rude remark from a snake handler
like Junior Crump to get under Daddy's skin.
Bill Tollerman collected all the cards back, placing
Junior Crump's hand into the greasy deck without looking to see what the cards
were, although everybody was no doubt dying to see what junk hand Junior Crump
tried bluffing with a fifteen dollar bet. I know I sure was. But that just wasn't
done: If a man concedes, he don't have to show his cards.
"C'mon, Nate. Take your winnings," Bill
Tollerman
said.
"Like Mr. Crump said—'that's a disputed hand,'
and I don't want no part of it."
"Why that's just plumb crazy. The only one arguing
about that hand was Junior, right boys?" Bill Tollerman then swept the pot
towards
ol' Nate.
"No, suh," ol' Nate said, looking directly at me.
"It ain't right."
"But a man's gotta take his winnings, or just
what in
the hell is the point of playing in the first place? Rules is rules."
"Yassuh, y'all's right there," ol' Nate
said, taking out only the money he contributed to the pot, some eight dollars
and fifty cents
worth, shoving the rest of the pot back into the center of the table. "Some
rules is chiseled in tablets, some rules is written in pencil. And the way I
figures
it, the pencil rules ain't worth fighting over."
"So, Nate," Daddy asked, "do you want everybody
to take their money back?"
Ol' Nate nodded, and the men took back their antes
with Bill Tollerman grumbling about setting bad precedents, leaving behind a
couple of dollars that belonged to Junior Crump. Daddy threw those bills and
some coins on top of Junior Crump's tobacco plug, and the men resumed playing
poker with Daddy sitting in next to Reggie Smith and me right beside Daddy. I
sat in the pool cue chair that was a leftover from the days when the games used
to get rough—or so legend has it.
For awhile the bets hovered around one dollar—and
sometimes two dollars if a man were feeling brash—and Daddy was holding
his own by being up maybe five dollars. I didn't actually count his money out
because
that would be rude and boastful. I just kept track in my head of what he put
out and what he took back in. The card playing banter, loud and rising up from
the
belly in order to be heard over the jukebox through the open door, concerned
mostly stuff like how the fins on the Cadillacs were getting smaller and smaller
or how could any man in his right mind ever be caught driving a Corvair, a car
with the dadgummed engine in the trunk? A Yankee car.
After a few more hands and a lot more beers, the
talk turned serious about baseball with Reggie Smith being the only man partial
to the West coast. "I sure do like that Willie Mays. You think our brother will
break Babe Ruth's record, Nate?"
I was curious about what ol' Nate thought about
Willie Mays hitting all those homers out in San Francisco—just as long
as he wasn't thinking about catfish no more, but I could tell by the way ol'
Nate plunked
down his cards and twisted himself in his chair to face Reggie square-up that
he sure wasn't pleased by Reggie's question.
"What the hell trash you talkin' about, boy?"
"Willie Mays, brother. Seven-fourteen's written
in pencil, ain't it?"
"I think Mickey Mantle might break it," I said,
knowing that he had way over 400 homers as I tested the waters of adult conversation.
"He's slowed down too much, son."
Ol' Nate turned towards Bill. "Mr. Tollerman, what
kind of ciphering you teaching these bucks down at the sawmill? Willie Mays out
in San Francisco sure ain't on no tear to hit no 714 home runs. And by anyone's
reckoning, Babe Ruth's record is chiseled in stone."
"Tha's right," Junior Crump said, standing in the
doorway. "No nigger's gonna beat Babe Ruth."
Holding a brown paper bag of take-out barbecue
that oozed rub-on sauce out the bottom like a blood stain seeped on a field dressed
deer's tarp, Junior Crump stutter-stepped over to his chair as if his boots were
cars at a demolition derby, and then he pawed at the money on top of his tobacco
chaw. You could practically see the corn liquor fumes steaming out of his mouth.
"So you finally got around to delivering our beers," Daddy said.
"Who been messin' with my stake?"
"Your stake?" Daddy asked. "What are you now, Junior,
some kind of a miner?"
"My chaw was on top of my money and now it ain't."
"Sit down," Daddy said. "The only thing different
is that you have more money now than from when you left."
Even though Junior Crump gave away about seventy-five
pounds to Daddy in bodyweight, and Daddy's not fat, Junior Crump must have been
drunker than I thought on account that he stared down at Daddy long and hard
with his leaky woodchip eyes like he was the devil fixin' to cast Daddy to the
lowest rung in Hell.
"Somebody touched my money."
"And that somebody is me, Crump," Daddy said in
a low voice that meant you better listen careful 'cuz he ain't gonna be repeating
himself.
"Tarnation and—and goddammit, Junior," Bill
Tollerman
said. "Nate divvied back that disputed pot and everybody got their money
back.
Now you were told to sit down." And so Bill picked up the card deck and
shuffled
them, ready to deal the next hand.
But Junior Crump walked over to the steel door,
slamming it shut and barring it closed like we were in a bank vault. He opened
up his take-out bag of barbecue and pulled out a Smith & Wesson .32 revolver—and
while not exactly considered a man stopper, the gun was plenty powerful enough
to bleed you dead real fast with one shot in the right spot—and then Junior
Crump fired a round into the ceiling, our ears exploding inward because there
was no where for the sound to escape to in the buttoned up room while dust and
fly crap rained down on us.
Daddy stood up fast, knocking over his chair. Junior
pointed the gun at me and motioned for Daddy to back off and not say
a goddamed word. And, man, now that dinky little .32 looked like I could run
my fist up the barrel checking for mice.
"So my money ain't good enough for ya, boy?" Junior
Crump said, redirecting the gun at ol' Nate. "Well what if I say all your nigger
money's good enough for me so slide it over here?"
"Then I'll just press charges with the Sheriff."
"Then I'll just press charges with the Sheriff,"
Junior Crump mimicked, and then he laughed like it was a Saturday afternoon at
the barbershop and he had heard a good blue joke. "Shit, boy," he asked
at Reggie,
"what's this country comin' to when niggers like y'all presses charges against
a white man?"
"Give him your money, man, and here's mine
too." Reggie shoved his money into ol' Nate's pile.
Ol' Nate placed both of his gnarled hands in plain
view on top of the table and said as calm as could be, "You can take my
money with your gun, Mr. Crump, but I ain't freely givin' it over to the likes
of you
with a smile on my face, nosuh."
"So y'all thinks you're gonna pull that sittin'
at the lunch counter shit or ridin' in the front of the bus in Monroe to spite
the likes of me, do ya?"
"Nosuh, Mr. Crump. All you is provin' is that you
gots the gun on me."
"Well the likes of me shits on you and all your
kind," Junior Crump said, edging up next to me.
Without even thinking about violence beforehand,
my hand grabbed a hold of the sawed-off pool cue scabbarded to the leg on my
chair as Junior Crump leaned across the table to plunder ol' Nate's money—
"Now that ain't right!" my voice cracked, backed
by images of Toothy nearly kicked to death, and Lord knows how many stolen catfish,
and Mama at home waiting for us, and catlickers and-and-and
—sonuvabitch if I didn't pull that pool
cue out in one smooth draw and swing that wood like Mickey Mantle jackin' one
out
of Yankee Stadium, my follow through gainin' power as the arc sang through my
arms, the pool cue's fat stump catching Junior Crump square on the temple, with
either his skull bone cavin' in or his head snappin' back hard—I ain't
sure
which, maybe it was both for all I know—watching that spiteful little .32
Smith
& Wesson kerplunk out of his hand onto the table—and foul, hateful
words vomiting out of my mouth like the devil had a hold of my tongue, and Daddy
was on top
of that cracker faster than I could blink with both of Daddy's fists swingin'
big haymakers in a fury springin' from Lord knows where, and that was before
Junior Crump could even collapse onto the table from my blow—out cold or
dead, no one could tell at first until Bill Tollerman and Reggie Smith pulled
Daddy
off.
"Don't kill the sumbitch twice!"
Somehow the steel door got unbolted and men must
have come streaming in from the gunshot noise and yelling, but at first I didn't
notice on account that Daddy was hugging me tight and crying, and I'd never seen
him cry before, and ol' Nate had his arm around my shoulder, and then I started
to bawl like a baby in a crib too when I saw ol' Nate's black arm against my
white skin and now I knew the difference between all three of those
words—nigger, colored, and Negro—and that Daddy, Mama, and all the
rest was all wrong about those words, and that menfolk hafta stick together but
only for
the right reasons, and me finally letting loose my grip on the sawed-off pool
cue as it dropped onto the cement floor, rolling away from me looking for another
head to crack someday.
We left Noogies after the Sheriff's boys arrived
but before the ambulance came and carted Junior Crump off to the hospital. Most
folks reckoned that Junior Crump would never show his leaky eyes at Noogies again,
but I wouldn't bet on anything concerning those Crumps and their kind. And you
can chisel that in stone.
|
