Christopher Buehlman - Those Across the River

“Did they have a lot of slaves?” Dora said.

“Lord, yes. Always comin and goin. Always different ones.”

“How did you feel about that?” said Dora.

“They was lucky. They was rich. We didn’t have no slaves. My daddy was a pateroller afore he volunteered.”

“Pateroller?” I said.

“Used to ride the roads lookin for coloreds without a pass from they master.”

“I mean how did you feel about slavery?” Dora said.

I shot her a look, but she shot one back.

“Wasn’t no way to feel about it, that’s just how it was. That was slave days. Now, some of it was done right and some of it was done wrong.”

“Who did it right?” Dora said. “I mean were there actually people who owned other people and did it right?”

“You make me tired,” Mrs. Wilcox said. “I don’t much like you.”

“Shall I leave?”

“No, sugar, you just keep sittin there like the world owes you somethin. And reach me some more sweet tea.”

Dora didn’t move this time, so I did it. Mrs. Wilcox got more on the chin, so I got up and got a towel from the sleepy black woman. When I came back, Dora was walking towards me with pursed lips. She handed me the notebook and pencil.

“She called me a whore. I’ll be in the car.”

“Do you want us to leave?”

“No. She really is a splendid resource. But I might punch her if I stay.”

I kissed her cheek and took the notebook. She strutted out of the Sunny Rest nursing home, giving me a warm look over her shoulder to let me know she was all right. A dazed-looking little bald man in a wheelchair waved a purplish claw at her in farewell, though she didn’t see.

Mrs. Wilcox spoke for another half an hour after Dora left. She sang more songs to the faded glory of the Savoyards and what a shame it was the Yankees won. She told me that when the slaves killed him, the pastor told his congregation to weep like the Israelites wept for Zion.

When she ran out of things to say, Mrs. Wilcox looked at me like she didn’t know who I was, and called for the twitchy white woman, saying I wasn’t her nephew and she wanted me thrown out. I played it cool, assuring the woman that I was, but that my aunt got confused sometimes. She nodded and went over to the old woman, who was thrashing her head back against her pillow.

It was time to go, and then some.

But I didn’t make it out the door.

A very thin, very old man two beds away motioned me over. He had cancer on his face that was hard to look at, and huge spectacles that made his watery, yellowish eyes look like owl’s eyes. He pulled my ear close to his face, but I turned my head so my better ear was closer.

“Don’t you believe them horsefeathers about Savvy-yard,” he said.

“No?” I said.

“No. He’s in hell. And I’m goin soon.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I ran his dogs on runaways afore I seen enough to quit. Then I’se fifteen. Old enough to join the militia. But the things I done. I helped take the skin off ’n one nigger who ran away twice, and stretched his hide between two poles, like a jackrabbit, with his face still on it. Had a wheel to spin the niggers on till they lost they minds. But he didn’t run dogs on his slaves when he hunted. He went out by himself. I saw him once, comin back naked. And they never came back. That place is haunted, young man.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Do you like the banjo?” he said.

“Sure.”

“Reach me my banjo an I’ll play you a song. It’s under the bed.”

I looked under the bed, but there was no banjo. Just the feet of the twitchy white woman getting closer.

“I reckon this is your uncle?” she said, giving me the angry eye.

“Don’t you fuss at him,” the old man said. “This is my nephew. Now, get me my banjo, you witch. You evil witch. I want to play something pretty.”

WHEN I GOT out to the car, I found that Eudora had put the top down. Her white legs were on display and her bare feet were on the dashboard. The smell of nail polish hit me. Her toenails were brick red and she had cotton between her toes.

“If I’m going to be a whore, I should look the part,” she said. “Mind if I dry these out while you drive?”

I threw my head back and laughed.

Jesus Christ, I was in love.

IT WAS ON the first or second day of September that the vagrants came to town. Two men, one white and one black, accompanying a mannish woman who smoked a pipe and wore her hair up under a man’s hat, established themselves on the benches in the middle of the town’s square. The white man held a sign that read NEED WORK while the black man held his head down so the brim of his hat kept shade on his face and the woman smoked her pipe. The white man had a huge mustache that would have sat well on a cowboy’s face. Nobody approached the town square for several hours, which was normal in the hot part of the day when the sun stooped and whipped the tea roses unmercifully, so around two o’clock they shuffled over to Harvey’s Drug Emporium and ordered an ice cream.

That’s where I was sitting, reading a collection of James Joyce, procrastinating again and glad to be out of the dank basement.

They were a penny short of the cost, so I slid one over to them.

Funny how specific the memory is; I still remember the sound of that penny going ssshhhkkk across the counter. They all nodded their heads and the white man thanked me. Harvey found it in his heart to scoop an extra half scoop on top since it was clear they meant to share it.

What struck me about the way they ate the ice cream was that they had a system; each took a level spoonful to be fair to the others, and their attack was almost choreographed. I suspected then that these were rail-riders, and that they had learned their table manners in those hobo camps I had heard about where men, women, blacks, whites, dogs and Chinamen all slept together and ate out of the same pot. I was fascinated.

“How are you makin it?” Harvey asked them.

“We makin it alright,” the white man said. “Be makin it better with some work. We can all three of us chop cotton, split wood, fix a roof. You know somebody needs a hand?”

Harvey said, “No,” then shook his head afterwards as if to emphasize the no , but more likely to shake the image of Miles Falmouth out of his head; Miles with his bad back and his oldest son just ten; the neighbors had been taking turns pitching in with the farm work. Miles, who had a little money now thanks to Pastor Lyndon’s collection. Miles, who hated vagrants, but not nearly as much as he hated blacks.

“No, I don’t know nobody,” Harvey said, closing the matter.

That was all they had to offer in the way of conversation, except for short, bland responses to Harvey’s questions. He spoke to them about different things, like how hard it was to run a drugstore with the economy so bad, or how smart he had been to put in a soda machine, how that was all that saved him from getting boarded up like the jeweler, or he told them about his plans to buy a car when business picked up so he could get to the mill town without having to bum a ride off somebody, but after a while he saw that they were just looking at him so he gave up on talking altogether. It got quiet. Flies buzzed against the screen windows. The fan up in the corner made the only real noise, and the three of them knew that the quiet was going to get them kicked out soon. Harvey had removed the empty ice cream dish so they could not even look at that or hold it near them like a badge of their right to sit at the counter. None of them spoke until the white man said, “Mister, we just want to sit in your fan for a little while. It sure is plum hot out there.”