Andrew Vachss - Two Trains Running

“So, when I tell you that, sometimes, the best you can hope for is just to get one in, you know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“And it doesn’t matter if you walk away afterward,” Beaumont said. “Look at me, Mickey; how long do you think it’s been since I could walk at all? It doesn’t matter if you crawl, just so long as you survive. Stay alive, so, someday, you can return the favor.”

“ ‘Getting your own back,’ we call it,” Shalare said, holding his glass in a silent toast to a shared value.

“And we call it ‘payback,’ ” Beaumont said, raising his own glass. “But it doesn’t matter what something’s called, only what it is. Have you ever just… nourished yourself with that thought, with only that thought? ‘Getting your own back’?”

“Sometimes,” Shalare said quietly, “it was more than food and drink to me. Without it, I would have starved.”

“I must have some Irish blood in me, then,” Beaumont said, solemnly.

1959 October 06 Tuesday 18:12

Rufus didn’t change out of his bellhop’s uniform when his shift was over. Though acknowledging the truth of what Moses had told him-he had, in fact, never seen a white man in the basement of the hotel-he reasoned that even a chance encounter with any of the white staff would go unnoticed if he was in uniform. Makes us look even more alike to you, he thought, as he made his way down the back stairs.

Walking past the kitchen, Rufus heard the the intimate caress of Charles Brown’s sultry voice drifting out of the radio, crooning his signature “Black Night.” “Oh, Charles!” a kitchen worker implored him, to the rich laughter of her girlfriends.

Moses was in his chair, his pipe already working.

“Leave it open,” he said, as Rufus entered. “People see a closed door, they got to find out what’s on the other side of it. We keep our voices down, with these walls, might as well be in a different town, all anyone could hear. Besides, this way, we see them coming.”

Nodding his head at the wisdom, Rufus glanced around the room, not saying a word.

“Ain’t got no other chair,” Moses said. “But you could probably get something to sit on out of the-”

“I can stand, say what I got to say.”

“Go ahead, then.”

“It’s about Rosa Mae.”

“What about her?”

“I got feelings for her. Not what you think,” Rufus said, holding up his hand as if to ward off those same thoughts. “I got… I’m deep in love with her, and I told her so.”

“So what you need to talk to me about?” Moses said, puffing slowly on his pipe.

“Rosa Mae’s got no father. Not even one of those Christmas daddies, come around once a year, bring some presents, get a fuss made over them, and then go back to their trifling little hustles. So, when I told her if she had a real father I would go and talk to him first, she said I should talk to you.”

Moses drew on his pipe again, his body language that of a man waiting for something. A patient man.

“I know she wasn’t just… messing me around,” Rufus said. “Everybody here knows you just like her father. Look out for her and all, I mean. And she listens to you like a father. Respects you like one, too. So…”

“So I’m like a roadblock you need to run, that about right?”

“No, sir. Not something to get around, that isn’t what I was saying. I mean, I got to show you something, same way any man would have to show a girl’s father something.”

“Not many young men think like that, not today.”

“Not many young black men think at all. All they want to do is get themselves some fine vines, a sweet ride, and tear it up on Saturday night.”

“And that’s not you, what you’re saying?”

“That’s not any kind of me, Mr. Moses. I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, and I don’t eat swine. I don’t want to make babies for the Welfare to feed. I save my money. And I got plans.”

“Everybody around here knows you’ve got a brain, Rufus,” the elderly man said, calmly. “But there’s a world of difference between smart and slick.”

“Fair enough. Just ask me what you want to know, and I’ll tell you. Then you can make up your own mind.”

“Let me give you an example,” the old man said, unruffled. “You’ve been knowing me for years, from your first day on the job. Before today, you speak to me, you call me ‘Moses,’ right? Or ‘man’ or some other kind of jive talk. Today, what comes out your mouth? It’s all ‘sir’ and ‘Mr. Moses.’ Like, all of a sudden, lightning struck you and you got all this respect. Now,” he said, drawing on his pipe unsuccessfully, then pausing to relight it, “that’s either get-over game, or you got another reason.”

“Rosa Mae-”

“-been calling me ‘Daddy Moses’ for a long time, Rufus. She didn’t start today.”

“I know that. But it wasn’t until I… knew I had feelings for her that it… meant anything to me. I’m not going to lie.”

“Because you got no other reason to show me respect.”

“You’re just like she is,” Rufus said. “Making things hard. What do you want me to say?”

“The truth. Like you promised.”

“All right,” Rufus said, moving closer to the old man. “Here’s some truth: I was raised to respect my elders, but that was all about manners-what you say, not what you feel. Why should I respect someone just because they’re older than me? That never made any sense.”

“Don’t make no sense to me, neither,” Moses said, surprising the younger man. “You know what experience is?”

“Of course I know what it is.”

“Yeah? So, you got something wrong with your car, you want to take it to an experienced mechanic?”

“Sure…” Rufus agreed, warily.

“Let’s say the man been working on cars for thirty years. You call a man like that ‘experienced,’ right?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, now let’s say he been working on cars for thirty years but he never was no good at it. In fact, he so lousy a mechanic that he had himself a hundred different jobs. Kept getting fired, one place after the other, because he couldn’t do a job without messing it up. He got a lot of experience, but no knowledge. Lots of old people like that. If they ain’t learned nothing, just being old don’t make them people you should be listening to.”

Rufus stared at the old man for a long time. Moses looked back, unperturbed, at peace within himself.

“Can I sit down? On that crate, there?” Rufus asked. “I got some things I need to tell you.”

1959 October 06 Tuesday 18:20

“It’s going to be Nixon for the Republicans,” Beaumont said.

“Sure, and who else? But he’s no war hero, like Ike was. And our guy, well, he is.”

“You’re positive that’s such a good thing?” Beaumont challenged his visitor. “If the voters think your guy’s going to get us into another mess like Korea, he’s dead in the water.”

“No, no, no,” Shalare answered, quickly. “That’s all been talked over. We know how to wrap a package, Roy. Our man’s going to be a tiger on national defense, sure, but that’ll be self-defense, not sticking our nose into another meat-grinder like Korea.”

“Nixon’s no Eisenhower in more ways than one,” Beaumont said, warningly. “And one of those is, he’s a whole lot smarter.”

“An election’s not an IQ test. If it was, Stevenson would have won the last couple of times, wouldn’t he?”

“There’s all kinds of smart,” Beaumont said. “I never met the man, but, with television, you can get a read on someone even at a distance. I’ll tell you this: you’re not going to find a craftier man in all of politics than Richard Nixon.”