Padgett Powell - Edisto

In the air they grab each other and shake each other like their stepchildren, and make noise like children being shaken, hysterical garbling and nonsense, jerking each other silly, agape at a fallen god. And Taurus wasn’t even looking. He stood there as if an anthem were playing and looked at the Cossack ladies. And they were looking straight ahead, not at the screen.

"He southpawed him," I screamed, but he didn’t seem to hear.

"I never knew what that word meant until—" But I he wasn’t listening.

We left and drove again, half until ever, and did not stop at a jernt or talk or anything, and I made it to school the next day on time.

How He Got His Name

It sounds funny, but I named him. And it is less ridiculous, someone being named Taurus, than you might think. The first night we went to the Baby Grand together I named him.

We strolled in, I the homunculus, and he the true circus property, because any dude that looks white and walks into a sweet shop without the credential of knowing someone very well or of wearing a badge is like a circus clown and his safety will depend on the dudes deciding he is a clown. That is what good race relations means. So we go on in past Jinx and Preston at the pool table, and I supply a nod up in the air while I walk and sort of overdo it in order to point at Taurus without using the geek’s gesture of a direct indication — we walk right past them like nothing’s new. That casualness tells them that I know him very well and they must continue shooting pool not to blow protocol. They see I am bringing an inside guest, not an outside guest, and they must meet him as if at a big party, with gracious informality, when they happen to find themselves within speaking range.

It’s a high show, because even though I am boy wonder in here, the Duchess’s little duke, I’ve never brought a guest. In fact, the only whites I’ve ever seen in the Grand are the old-family boys who come in stoned and with goods to share when there’s some music. The Doctor could probably bring in a coroner, but she wouldn’t.

"Two 45s," I tell Jake.

He reaches down in the silver icebox and looks up at us before hauling them up.

" Cold ones, now, Jake. My friend is thirsty? You try to put the world in simple terms when it’s complicated.

Two tallboys hit the bar, sixteen ounces and long as howitzer shells.

“Jake, want you to meet—"

They were ahead of me. Taurus had one hand on his beer and the other up in the air, with his elbow on the bar as though to arm-wrestle, and Jake swung into it in the Negro sidewinder handshake. They paused and Jake gave a most delicate knuckle bump with his free hand before touching both his hands to the bar rag tucked into his apron string.

"We heard you had a potner," Jake said to me. Taurus watched us both.

"But I’m worrit about you bringin’ him in heah." Jake picked up the beers and wiped the water off the bar and set them down. I was unsteady on my stool, legs up in the air like one of the famous Southern ladies whose feet never touch the floor when they sit in chairs.

"Why?" I said.

"Cause if he tries to keep up wid jew , we mought have to care him out," and he laughed his girlish laugh, very artificial, very considerate: he was putting on a bit of the old nigger act while watching my new potner. Everything would be fine.

"Jake," Taurus said, easily settling his can down on Jake’s side of the bar, "I would genuinely prefer a Slitz, please."

"Malt?"

"Malt."

Jake got it. "Say, I know you take care of Sim and no problem, iss no problem. He all reet."

"I got you," Taurus said then, split open his brand, and he was in. Slitz —Jesus, he hit the dialect and drank fast. It was then that I named him.

He set out for Preston and Jinx at the pool table and I had to climb down the stool like Tarzan’s boy down a chrome vine. Just then two women came in (you call them anything but that — sistahs, snakes, or momma if the relationship is a close one) and bumped into Jinx and Preston, who were turning their backs to the front door to adjust for Taurus’s coming up to the table. Well, it would have been a regular meeting like at the bar except the snakes had action on their minds and saw Taurus with me scrambling after him carrying a beer can as big as my arm, and one of them said, hip-setting, "Who dis ?”

It was out before I thought to say it, with a certitude that gave the name all the undeniability of a flat, plastic decal across the rear windshield of a low I Buick: "Taurus. This is my fr—"

"Mistah hoo ?” If a baby owl could hoot, it wouldn’t be any higher than that sound was. She was mocking, of course, especially with the "Mister," but she was interested enough to mock.

"Taurus," I said again. The miracle was, nobody laughed.

"Taurus?" the second snake said.

"Taurus!" said the first. And he was veritably laminated into the community, as easy as you please, a fixture like me. I thought for a long time that it went so easily because of my diplomatic powers and immunities, that he moved like a fish in cool water because I stocked the tank.

"This is Preston and this is Jenkins," I said.

"Preston," Taurus said, and shook Preston’s arm and looked into his eyes, which are like eyes deep in a gorilla suit, and the same with Jinx, who is more shy and whose eyes bulge out so he looks at the floor to hide them.

"They call me Jinx," he said, and looked up.

Already Jinx’s eyes had that liquid, yellow, mullet look, from drinking too much that night and I guess the nights before. Preston’s were drier but too dark and low to really tell. If there was ever a raid or a fire or anything at the Grand, I thought Preston would carry me out like I was Fay Wray and Jinx would be caught rear guard — grabbed by his leg going out a window or burned up. Of course I knew everybody and they me, but these guys always seemed genuinely happy to see me, unlike the others, and Preston even understood what I meant when I offered him my warm, undrunk 45s, and he drank them without a show of thanks, to preserve my reputation.

Cold air that night drove a bunch of people in, and everybody drank to keep warm, and Jake fried chicken wings half the night and kept putting beers and chicken wings in wax paper on the bar, and greasy faces and fingers took them. A deep press of people kept coming by and so everybody met Taurus in the party-decorous way, and late (kind of, for me) we got ready to go.

Taurus stopped and said to Preston on the way out, "Preston, I need you to do me a small favor. Tell Louester Samuels that I’m not going to serve her the paper about the mixup in Charleston. It went back to public service — the sheriff." Taurus walked out and Preston looked down at me.

"You know this Louester?” I said.

"Yeah, she heah now."

"She’s in here?"

"She in heah, shihh. You saw her, first bitch in the door. He saw’m, too. Hell, Simaman, she momma work for you momma, if iss the right one."

"Well, I’ve never seen her, Preston."

"He know her?"

"I don’t think so."

"He know sump’m. How he know I know her?"

"Later on, Preston. Later on."

The next day Taurus told me a couple of stories about serving paper and said it was good money on a loose schedule but he didn’t like to do it. I thought they’d be good stories for the Doctor. But what got me that night was how he watched everything and waited patiently for the moments to unfold before him. To the extent he lets me name him. He never corrected me. I called him Taurus from there on, fine with him. And little things like that Slitz trick. He was controlling things, but like the elephant promised the monkey, he wasn’t going to force it.