Percival Everett - Big Picture - Stories

Winston nearly fainted, actually swayed before collecting himself enough to sprint across the hotel lobby, and into the public rest room. He set the teeth on the sink and began to wash his hands furiously. One of the tourists standing at a neighboring sink seemed frightened. “Found my friend’s teeth,” Winston said. The man ran out. Winston washed for many minutes. He grabbed the dentures in a couple of paper towels and took them upstairs to the room.

“Found them,” he said as he stepped in.

Jubal let out a sigh. “Thank you, Jesus, thank you, thank you,” he said. He took them from Winston and paused. “Where’d you find them?”

Winston coughed, cleared his throat. “I found them in the street, Jubal, just lying there.”

Jubal blew out a whistle between bare gums. “Good.” He took them to the bathroom and held them under the water. He loaded them into his face and worked his jaw a bit.

Winston went to the window and started to put the room back together. He slipped the curtain hooks through the rod eyes. Below he could see the derelict turn the corner and pass out of sight.

“Just lying in the street, huh?” Jubal asked.

“Just lying there.”

“Funny. Wonder how they got down there.”

Winston turned to look at Jubal, thinking that the man didn’t believe him. But Jubal showed nothing but puzzlement as he began to help put the room back together. Winston was pretty sure that Lucius Carter had come into the room and taken the teeth, but he wasn’t going to talk about it with Jubal.

“You know, a man can walk in his sleep,” Jubal said. “Won’t have a notion in the morning of where he’s been.”

“Not uncommon,” Winston said.

“I ain’t never known myself to walk in my sleep.”

“Hmmm,” Winston said.

Jubal had the sheets and covers on top of the two beds and he sat down on his. “I want to thank you for helping me out last night. When I was choking, I mean.”

“You bet.”

“A dentist suggested I use some of that sticky stuff, you know, to hold my teeth firm, but I can’t stand it. Too much maintenance.”

Winston nodded, putting up the second curtain.

Jubal went to the window and looked at the street. “Just lyin’ there,” he said more to himself than to Winston. “Top and bottom together?”

“Mere inches apart.”

“Flat out luck.”

Winston worked a kink out of his shoulder. “Could be that I got them stuck to my sack or sleeve or something when I went to do my laundry and they fell off outside.”

The presence of even a lame explanation seemed to relax Jubal. He worked his bite. “Sun must have warped them a little.”

“Sorry.”

The older man waved it off. “Just glad to have ’em back. They’ll mold back. Besides, if I’d choked to death …” He stopped. “What do you say we grab some chow and shoot some pool?”

“Okay.”

It was ten o’clock in the morning, but late enough for burgers. Winston had a mug of milk with his food and talked a frowning Jubal into the same. They ate and shot a game and watched a boring baseball game on the set behind the bar. Every bite seemed an exercise for Jubal and Winston began to worry that the bum had damaged the dentures. He wondered if he needed to say something.

“Hey there, girls,” Lucius Carter called to them.

Jubal had made up his mind to ignore the man. He went off to the rest room.

Lucius came to the table with a big ugly smile on his face.

Winston looked at him. “Funny stunt with a man’s teeth.”

Lucius laughed and looked at the two half-eaten burgers. “No harm done. He found ’em, didn’t he?”

“Found them?” Winston felt hollow and a bit sick. “I wasn’t there when he found them. Where were they?”

Lucius looked at Winston with a crooked smile. “Don’t recall now.”

“That sort of shit make you feel like a big man?” Winston was on the prod.

“Like I said, no harm done.”

Winston slammed his cue stick down on the table. “Get the hell outta here!” His hand buzzed, he wanted to raise the stick high, but instead he let go.

The bartender called over, “No trouble.”

“Out, Carter.”

Lucius raised his hands. “Fine.” He looked over at the bartender. “No trouble.” He turned to Winston, smiled again and said, “Life’s hard, but then the pay is low.”

When Jubal came back out, Lucius was gone. “Where’s the dung bank?”

“He left.”

Jubal sat down behind his burger and rubbed his temples.

“How do your teeth feel?”

“Feel okay.” Jubal looked at Winston. “What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“How come you ain’t eatin’?” Jubal asked. “I’m not too hungry.”

They left the tavern and got into Winston’s truck. The sun was just past straight up and beating down on the cab. Winston looked before pulling out into the traffic.

“What do you think makes a fella end up like Lucius?” Winston asked.

“You mean, what makes him act the way he does?”

“Yeah.” Winston switched on the radio.

“Too much sun,” Jubal said. “Hell, I don’t know. He must have been drowned at birth.”

“Yeah, well.”

“He sure hates you,” Jubal said.

“Yep.”

Jubal was looking at Winston. “He hates you ‘cause you’re colored.”

“Black.”

“Whatever. But that’s why he hates you. Don’t make no sense to me. You can’t help what you are.”

Winston looked at the man. “I don’t need to help it.”

“Whatever.”

“How do you feel about the fact that I’m black?” Winston felt stupid asking the question.

“Don’t make me no never mind. You could be purple for all I fuckin’ care. Why all the questions?”

“I don’t know.”

They didn’t say much during the rest of the drive. Winston watched the road and Jubal gazed out the window at the landscape. As they rolled to a stop near the bunkhouse, Winston said, “You know I don’t mind that you’re white, Jubal.”

“Glad to hear it.” Jubal paused before opening his door. “What made you think to say that?”

“Just lookin’ at you,” Winston said.

Michael walked out and down toward Massachusetts Avenue, hearing the horns of the traffic, smelling the exhaust, remembering how once he was passed up four times in the rain in D.C. by cabbies who wouldn’t stop for a black man. The clincher was that two of the drivers had been black as well. It was a Thursday, the night of Washington’s so-called “gallery walk”—“so-called” because, although some of the galleries in Adams-Morgan and Georgetown were within walking distance from one another, most were scattered all over the place, near Dupont Circle, well up Connecticut and downtown. Michael didn’t really want to be there; he wasn’t sure why he maintained a relationship with the small gallery. Washington was not terribly important in the art world, but the owner had been an early supporter of his. The owner was a flamboyantly gay man who had sold the occasional painting when Michael was starving and really needed a sale. Now, sales were common, and welcome, but the news of them did little to move Michael beyond the sense of loss he felt knowing the paintings were gone. Joshua, the gallery owner, had talked Michael into the show, telling him that Santa Fe, Los Angeles, and New York were not the only places where art happened.

“Where do you live, my lovely Michael?” Joshua had asked over the phone. “Do you live in Los Angeles, my sweet? No, you don’t. Have you become so jaded and mainstream and, how shall I put it, American?”

It was the last word that had gotten under Michael’s skin. Now the wonderful irony was that to prove to himself that he hadn’t succumbed to some simple American idiocy about the location of art, he was having a show he didn’t need in the nation’s capital.