Colin Harrison - The Havana Room

He held the door open for her. "You want to come in?"

She frowned at him and didn't step inside.

"How did you-"

"Poppy told me you might be here, so I kept banging."

"You try the buzzer?"

"Didn't see no buzzer."

"You want to come in where it's warm?"

"No, I don't. I'm going to say my piece and then be done. I don't need much of your time where that is concerned, Jay Rainey, not much time at all."

So we stepped outside into the cold.

"This is my lawyer, Bill Wyeth."

The old woman nodded at me, but it was a disgusted and wary nod, too. "All right then. You've got your lawyer with you. You expecting me?"

"No," said Jay. "Why?"

"Funny, 'cause you got a lawyer with you."

"We were just looking at the building," I said.

"You knowed I was coming?" she demanded. "Poppy tell you?"

Jay shook his head. "What can I do for you, Mrs. Jones? I'm sorry about Herschel. I sent some-"

She waved her hand in his face bitterly. "Jay Rainey, don't start all that with me. I come down here to tell you that you got to do something."

"Like what?"

"Something for the family." Her eyes, yellowed and old, didn't blink. "Herschel, he work for your family almost forty years."

"I know that," said Jay.

"He kept that farm going all those years things was so bad for your family and when your daddy get sick and then after he die! You was gone most of that time, you don't know how it was."

"Yes."

"So now you got to do something."

"You mean money."

"That's what I mean, yes. I mean money! Herschel was all we had." She looked disapprovingly at me, a stranger hearing her business. "You know my boys, the two of them, Robert and Tyree, they settled now with families, they the ones who worked with Herschel, but you don't know Tommy and his cousin Harold."

Jay was silent.

"They upset."

"Okay-" Jay glanced at me, trying to sound reasonable.

"I said they upset and that ain't good!" Mrs. Jones stamped her foot. "They call me this morning and they say they hear about it from Tyree's wife, who say some kind of foolishness about her husband's daddy being left way out there frozen and all, and they pretty angry about that! Something about how the ambulance man had to blow hot air all over him to get him out of that tractor seat." She lifted her chin defiantly at Jay. "That's disrespectful, see, that's saying the man was dying and no one helped him! He was sitting there calling out to heaven in the cold and no one in this world knew nothing! No one cared he was dying alone, dying with no comfort! He dying of his bad heart right there, so bad he couldn't move! Tyree's wife told them all that. She was angry and she was crying and she was mad. Yes, she was! And it made them mad, too, yes, it did. I ain't going to lie about that, not where that is concerned, no I ain't. Them boys is dangerous, Jay Rainey, and they got a reason to be mad, is all I'm saying. Nobody was thinking about him, nobody was worrying about some old black man! Just assuming Herschel was always going to do what he was told no matter how cold it be outside! And your father, he never pay Herschel his Social Security. That's why he still working! And that's why he end up dead! Seventy-three-year-old man have no business being out there in that kind of cold, and the family- we is upset! You hearing me? We is upset! Now Harold, you know he always look up to Herschel. And now Harold, he gotten big, he got some kind of club or something here in the city, he got all kinds of money, and people working for him, and you don't want to cross that boy. He heard about this and I know he ain't happy. That boy has some kind of temper! The things he done, hoo! Don't get me started on that! He come out of prison five years ago and I suspect it was hi s fault, too. I don't like to think about what gets in his mind. Uh-uh, no! That boy is dangerous, I always said." She tightened her lips, and her cheap theatrics were both utterly obvious and entirely convincing.

"Now then," she went on, sensing her advantage, "you was good to Herschel, Jay Rainey, so I think I owe you a warning in that respect." She waited to see if he understood. Then she addressed me, as if I were implicated, too. "I mean, I can't control them boys. They ain't boys no more, neither. I lost them when they was fourteen or fifteen. They men now. They live here in the city most times." She looked away a moment. I wondered if she might be glancing down the street. "Harold, they say he was lucky to get the time he did, that he beat a man so bad he-"

"Please tell them we'll work out a fair settlement," said Jay.

"Huh. They want one hundred thousand dollars."

"That's a lot of money, Mrs. Jones."

She looked at me, eyes dark. "So, Mr. Wyeth, tell him."

I glanced at Jay. "Tell him what?"

"Tell him it ain't a lot of money. Even a old woman know that! Lots of other things cost more. Lots of problems cost more."

"Mrs. Jones," Jay said. "Herschel had a terrible heart. How many heart attacks did he already have? Four? I drove him to the hospital once myself. I paid for his doctor, I don't know how many times."

She pressed her mouth tight and shook her head. "You also asked him to go out there in the cold, do that farmwork."

"I asked him a week earlier, when it was still plenty warm," answered Jay, his voice tight. "It was maybe four hours of work. I guess he put it off and then the weather got cold."

She was already shaking her head. "Naw, he was out there five or six days before. He was finished, because Herschel was making applesauce that day. He go picking up the grass apples in November and put them in the cellar and he always start making his sauce after the fieldwork done for the winter. That Herschel, see, I know him my whole life. I know the man. He had habits. He was done in the field! He had five bushels of apples on the kitchen counter in the morning, he had his paring knife and board, he turned on the sports, he wasn't planning on doing no bulldozing in no snowstorm."

Jay shook his head, ready to disagree. "But I guess he wasn't through, not if he was on the bulldozer. I hadn't been out there in a week or-"

"I talked to him about that!" Mrs. Jones shrieked. "He said you kept calling him and saying it was important it get done by such and such a time, and he was sick one of those days and he took himself out there anyway, even though I told him he was sick. But that was almost a week ago, Jay Rainey! He was all done with his work! Yesterday he wash his apples and then go down in the cellar and say I need me some more jars and then he goes out driving and then the next thing I know he ain't coming home. And it gets later and later and we is worried sick! Then we get a call at four in the morning that he's dead! On a bulldozer! I don't know why he was out there. But the way I look at it, if he was on that thing, he was working for you."

"But if he'd already-" Jay began, then stopped, knowing he was arguing against the memory of a dead man. "All that's done. We'll find an acceptable settlement."

It was a standoff. "Mrs. Jones," I asked, "just out of curiosity, what game was on the TV? The Knicks?"

She looked at Jay. "You better get yourself a new lawyer."

"What? Why?"

"He's putting things in my mouth."

"What?"

"Herschel always watching that Tiger Woods hit the ball far."

One of the winter golf tournaments, in the early rounds. "I see my mistake."

"You do?"

"I thought this was happening at night," I said.

"Herschel ain't going out to bulldoze at night! You think he's crazy? This was after lunch." Mrs. Jones looked from Jay to me and back again in frustration. "Why we talking about this? I'm going tell those boys you said you'd pay the family that money, Jay Rainey. I'm going tell them you said you was happy to pay it! I'm going tell them you thought that was a good number, that was a fair number! How you feel real bad about Herschel. Yes, that's what I'm do! They expecting a call this morning. They watching closely! They know this is your new building, 'cause I told them. Poppy told me the number and I told them. So you see? I'm going tell them you said you'd pay! I think they'll take it. But I can't be sure. I can't control them boys no more, Jay Rainey. They wild now! They go around with their girls and cars and whatnot, it's out of my hands." She rebuttoned the top button of her coat and yanked her gloves tight. "I'll be going, then."