Charlie Smith - Ginny Gall

He started to say something but he couldn’t. It shamed him too much. He wished he hadn’t brought it up.

This girl.

He sneaked a glance at her. It wasn’t that he wanted to fool or comfort this ginger-colored girl with her bunchy hair pressed down under a green cotton scarf but that she would look up from mashing sweet potatoes and talking to him of speeches and speechifiers and find him dear. (He was this way with every girl, every woman too. He wanted to tell her this, confess it, but he thought this would be a bad idea and so he kept his mouth shut.) Under a mixed cloudy afternoon sky he yearned.

Just then came a shout from the helpboy John Day over to the side of the Emporium — which was actually several smallish houses linked together by closed-in catwalks around the central three-story house — yelling at somebody in big trouble. He stood up as Kattie said, “What’s that?” and he put his hand on her arm to steady her if she needed steadying — and himself, because the shout scared him too — and then he could see John Day down on his knees looking under the big house that in most places — the undercarriage — was covered over with a wooden trellis planted in yellow jasmine but not where John Day was looking and poking up into it with a section of broom handle. He ran out and found John Day poking hard, jabbing at something, and squatting behind him was Bunny Boy holding up the skirts of his shiny yellow suit coat and peering sideways over his shoulder as John Day gave a vicious poke to whatever it was stuck up under the house.

“Come out of there, you crazy fool,” cried John Day.

“Go get him,” Bunny Boy said.

Delvin jumped down from the porch and ran over to the scene. “What is it?” he said. He trembled with excitement.

“Can you see him?” Bunny Boy said to John Day who was swishing the broom handle back and forth under the house, raising red dust. “Come over here, Joe,” he yelled at one of the other factotums, a heavyset man pulling sheets off a long washline over near the board back fence. “And you,” he said to Delvin, “get down there and help this boy pull that nonscrip out of there.”

“It’s a somebody?” Delvin said.

“It’s a nobody, who’s going to wind up even less,” Bunny sneered, ducking his head to peer into the gloom. “Stick yo hand up there,” he said to John Day. “Come here, Joe.”

Joe came up bringing a shovel. “You want me to dig ’im out, Mr. Bunny?”

“In a minute,” Bunny Boy said. “Hey,” he said to John Day, “move over let Joe stick his arm up in there. Joe, get down there and grab that rascal.”

“What is it?” Joe said. “A possum? I don’t want to stick my hand up after no possum.”

Bunny Boy smirked. “Some ’ud say that. Not me. It’s a lost ’un though.”

Joe, a blocky, fidgety man with a small square face, got down on his hands and knees in the powdery red dirt and, shoving John Day aside, crammed himself into the opening and skinnied up under the house. “Grab my feet,” he said to nobody in particular, or to everybody.

Bunny Boy indicated to Delvin that this should be his role.

But even with Delvin and John Day holding the man’s thick, knobby ankles, Joe was unable to get far up under the house.

“You do it,” Bunny Boy said to Delvin. “Joe, get out of there.”

It took the three of them to pull Joe out. He came forth covered in red dust, a mummery of himself. Delvin laughed, but the laugh was squelched — Bunny made a flicking motion with his right hand, indicating that is was Delvin’s turn at the enterprise.

“What was it?” he said to Joe. “A person?”

“Hard to say,” Joe said. “It had human form, but that might not be the telling thing.”

Delvin’s stomach turned over. He wanted to run away but he was afraid to have these people see how scared he was. A couple of children stood on the picnic table Miss Ellereen kept in the backyard. One of the children — a boy a few years younger than him — was standing on one leg. It was a clearing day. The sky looked painted on.

He lowered himself into the dust, wanting to hold his nose for the stink he feared was in it and for the germs he’d read about swirling in such places but he didn’t and as he slithered into the opening he smelled not a stink but an odor of cleanness and a clayey sweetness that made him want to come back at another time and lie there a while. It was cool and quiet. At first he couldn’t make out anyone, but then as his eyes adjusted he saw a form scrunched up against the brick chimney that was a central feature of that part of the Emporium. This is the music room, Delvin thought; he hadn’t realized it. He pictured the ladies sitting up there listening to Punky Wills play the piano. He could hear someone faintly striking the keys, an idler or some lady dreaming of another life far from such houses. He thought of knocking on the floor to scare whoever it was, but he didn’t. The form, the dark figure — small, the figure of a boy like him — lay drawn up against the chimney. Delvin could see his shape but he couldn’t make out his face.

“You got to come out,” he said. “You understand that, don’t you? So you probably better just come on. After me they’re gon send somebody a whole lot meaner.” Little puffs of dust like thin smoke in the half light twirled up where he placed his hands. “Come on now,” he said, his voice quiet in the soft dust.

The man or boy let out a low moan.

“You hurt?” Delvin said. The figure didn’t answer. “You’re scared, aint you? I would be too. But you got to come on. They’ll go get the police directly.”

Delvin looked back toward the opening. Bunny Boy and Joe peered at him from either side of the torn-away trellis. Bunny Boy waved him on. “Go,” he mouthed. There were doodlebug holes in the dust, little cone-shaped depressions. A strand of spiderweb like a wide white ribbon hung from a floor joist. Delvin shuddered. He turned back to the cowering form.

“If you don’t come on,” he said, “I’m going to have to gather you.”

He crawled up closer. The figure didn’t move.

“Come on now.”

The figure kicked at him hard, the sole of his bare foot flashing in the caliginous murk, a kick that would have hurt if it caught him.

“Damn.”

He could smell the figure’s odor, sour and sharp with the stink of fresh shit.

“Ah well,” Delvin said. “I’m sorry.”

He knew how he would be in a predicament like this. If it was just him, he’d leave this sniffler, let him work his way out when things died down. But it wasn’t just him. Next they’d send Joe up after him with the shovel.

Delvin feinted a grab and when the figure kicked, he caught his fully extended foot. When the figure tried to pull his foot back Delvin caught the other one and pulled hard. The figure — the person — started to kick his first foot loose, and that let Delvin catch both feet in his arms. He crabbed fast backwards, pulling the writhing figure with him.

“Snatch me,” he cried to Joe and Bunny Boy.

Somebody’s hands grabbed his ankles and jerked him in one sharp motion halfway out of the hole. The figured writhed, pulled partially free and snaked a ways back in, but Joe hauled them both out in a cloud of pale red dust.

Before anybody could stop him John Day reached over and whacked the figure with the broom handle. Delvin was angry too and he socked the figure in the thigh with the flat of his hand. The figure cried out in a boy’s cracked voice. He writhed on the crumbly dirt.

“Stand back,” Bunny Boy cried, and before anybody could move he flung a bucket of dishwater on the figure and on Delvin who was still holding one of his legs.

The water revealed the albino Winston Morgred. Delvin hadn’t seen him since the day he left the africano foundlings home. His orange hair was so thick the water beaded on it and on his pale freckled skin, his flattened nose and pursy lips.