James Burke - Half of Paradise

“I don’t feel like making no train trip tonight.”

“There’s something else in the envelope. Maybe it will make you feel better.”

J.P. took out the check and held it in the light from the desk lamp. It was for four hundred dollars, payable to him.

“Lathrop told me to advance it to you,” Hunnicut said.

“I still ain’t up to making a five-hundred-mile train trip tonight.”

“You’re giving me a burn in the ass, J.P.”

“You want me to take off in the middle of the night on two hours’ notice without telling me nothing except I’m going to sell vitamin tonic for somebody I ain’t even seen. That money won’t do me no good in a hospital or a cuckoo ward.”

“I want you to listen to what I got to say, J.P. Lathrop is one of the biggest men in the state. There’s a dozen of these fine politicians in the capital who get their bread buttered by Jim. He could have bought a boxcar load of hillbilly singers to push his product, but he picked you because me and him has done business before. If you think you’ve gotten big and you can tell me what to do, or slough off Lathrop’s offer, tear up that check and there will be someone else riding the train tonight.”

“I ain’t sloughing off his offer. I said I’m wore out and I want to be told about something once in a while.”

“I’m fed up talking with you. Either do what I tell you, or you can start back for the tenant farm and chop cotton like a nigger for three dollars a day.”

“You can’t break my contract.”

“I can do any goddamn thing I please.”

“Why does it have to be tonight?”

“Because I say so,” Virdo Hunnicut said, and slammed the flat of his hand on the desk. He wiped his sweating face. “Pack your things and get down to the station. When you get into Nashville go to the Grand Hotel. A man from the radio station will meet you there.”

J.P. sat for a minute and looked at Hunnicut. The room was quiet except for the creak of the straight-back chair and Hunnicut’s wheezing. He folded the check and put it in his shirt pocket with the tickets and walked from the room.

He packed the clothes he would need into a single suitcase, picked up his guitar, and took a cab to the depot. He rested his head on the back of the seat and looked blankly out the window while the cab rode downtown. The neon signs were a long blur of colored light without shape or form. The smell of the street, the tar and asphalt, and the dryness of the September night came to him through the open window. It was the end of day in the city; there was the burnt, electric odor of the streetcars and the dry scratch and flash of red as they crossed the electric connections; the pages of newspaper scudding along the sidewalks; the faint smell of rubber and gasoline from the automobiles; the Salvation Army band on the corner, with their high-collar blue uniforms and homely faces and loud brass instruments and tambourines and shrill voices, singing “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks We Stand”; and the missions where the bums could get a meal and a cot if they would sit through a sermon on salvation and Jesus Christ.

J.P. closed his eyes and let his head sag to one side. He didn’t know the cab had stopped at the station until the driver woke him. The redcap carried his bag into the waiting room; he sat down on one of the pewlike benches, put his guitar case beside him, and read the train schedule on the opposite wall. There were a few people in the waiting room. A porter slept in a chair by the platform door. J.P. took out his tickets and looked at them. Hunnicut had put him in a chaircar. He went to the ticket window and talked with the stationmaster and tried to get reservations on a Pullman. The stationmaster told him that there were no more reservations to be had, and he would have to ride in the chaircar.

His train was announced over the loudspeaker, and he carried his bag and guitar case out on the platform. The ice and baggage wagons rumbled over the wood planks. The trainmen opened the vestibule doors of the coaches and put down the stepstool for the passengers. Men in overalls moved along the cinder bed by the side of the train with copper oil cans. J.P. walked down the platform and found his car. The conductor looked at his ticket and helped him up into the vestibule.

The car was crowded and the air was thick with smoke. He made his way down the aisle, bumping people with his guitar case, and took a seat at the end of the car. A soldier snored loudly next to him. J.P. pushed back the seat and tried to relax. His legs were cramped and he couldn’t stretch out. A child close by began to cry. The train hissed and jolted and moved slowly out of the station. The lights in the car went down, and J.P. felt the darkness go over him.

The telegraph wires are weaving through the air outside the window and I’m going to Nashville Tennessee for Big Jim Lathrop Big Jim sends bread and butter checks to the state capitol the train is rocking back and forth rocking and I lean back and sleep in the dusty smell of old cushions and the train rocks me down past the dust of the cushions to where it is cool like sheets against my back and then the hot wetness of her on top of me I felt the bone in Doc Elgin’s hand and I had to look away when he stared at me and he give April something in a package because I seen it in her drawer and she covered it over with a slip when she seen me looking at it she has small blue marks on her arms

Hunnicutt said You can start back to the tenant farm and chop cotton like a nigger for three dollars a day but he don’t know nothing about chopping cotton the hoe goes up in the air and thuds down in the dirt and I see the shadow of my straw hat on the ground I never been in Tennessee Troy is from Memphis he ain’t picked cotton for two cents a pound none of them knows how to drag the half-full burlap sack through the rows with one hand and pick the white puff with the other and put it in the sack

they were singing On Jordan’s Banks and the bums stood in line to get inside because it was night and they had to find a place to sleep I heard them singing in the camp back home and they slept on army cots and mixed lighter fluid with orange juice and I seen one trade his overcoat for a quart jar of moon they put up the cots around a big iron stove and their faces looked like corpses sticking out from under the blanket sometimes I watched the evening train run across the sun and stop by the water tower and they would crawl out of the rods and that night I heard them singing hymns in the camp like the nigger funeral marches they’re not niggers their faces are white like ash under the blanket and they take off their coats and wrap them around their feet to keep warm .

Doc Elgin said to take one when I need a push it ain’t happy stuff I seen niggers taking cocaine and it comes in a powder and it gets them high and you can tell when they’re on it by their eyes her eyes were shrunk up like pinpoints and I started to ask her if Elgin done that too but I didn’t because she said not to talk about him no more the skin on her breasts looked thin and milky like a candle flame was behind it and you could see through it I could feel it coming on inside me and I held the back of her legs and felt it swell and burst and then she started it over again

whistle blowing down the line and I watch the sun plunge out of the sun across the fields and the crimson evening fade behind the trees

There were two trucks backed up to the loading ramp on the side of the warehouse. The side street was dark except for the glow of light that shone through the open freight doors of the building. A sign above the door said Bonham Shipping Company. A white man and a Negro were bringing out crates and loading them in the trucks. Bonham, the light tan Negro who looked like a Baptist deacon, stood on the ramp. Toussaint waited beside his truck and watched the loading. His arm was in a black sling. The driver of the other truck, a white man, sat in his cab behind the steering wheel. He wore yellow leather gloves and an army fatigue cap and smoked a cigarette without taking it out of his mouth. There were ashes on the front of his shirt.