Charlie Smith - Ginny Gall

He rested his back against a scarred tulip poplar in Constitution Park, watching an old white man peel an apple with a gold penknife for a little girl in a yellow crepe dress. He watched an unidentified africano man with one leg pull himself into the bed of a wagon, work himself onto the seat, untie the reins from the brake, and clop a brown mule down the cobblestone street, the man smiling sarcastically to himself, the mule never picking up its gait as the wagon rounded the corner and disappeared — into time itself, it seemed to Delvin — leaving behind a patch of undisturbed sunlight on the fish-colored cobbles of Tremaine street.

He bought a paper cup of sweet iced tea at the window marked “Colored” at the back of Hunter’s Restaurant, these windows and doors and slots and chutes the only places, he thought, where the word colored was ever capitalized, smiling to himself as he thought this, tipping his head to the negro woman who handed the cup to him, wanting to touch her hand with his, just for the humanness, the solid pressure of life between them, let her know he was as alive as she was, ready for what came next. .

He sat drinking the tea on a low wall overlooking the alley in back of a vacant lot between Cooper’s Mercantile and the newspaper offices. Rain had left a tracery of red clay veins running among broom and dog fennel in the lot. Out in the alley a yellow mongrel shook a dirty white glove in its jaws. A crow pecked at a ragged bouquet of chrysanthemums and at the entrance to the alley two women scolded three tiny children who gazed up at them with the rapt faces of believers. A breeze picked at the tops of a patch of fennel, touching the pale green filigree with a mindless tenderness, and brought his lost, or never quite found, love, Celia, to mind. Or maybe, he thought, she just came on her own. Or never left. She’d sent letters to the funeral home, letters he dived into as soon as he got the hugs and handshakes out of the way. He’d tied them up with a string and carried them with him everywhere in the inside pocket of the brown linen coat he wore. He took them out to re-sort them, commonplace with him these days. He opened the first and read it again. Somehow it seemed to have changed. It was not so interested in him as he thought. It was kindly, but distant. He read another and then another. The letters were like messages to a straggler. To the one who couldn’t keep up. How strange the world was — how so easily you could get yourself into a fix. He had a tendency to hang back in corners, wore the brim of his hat pulled down and stood in the shade of great oaks — still not sure the law wasn’t waiting for him. He had begun to dream again about his mother. In the dreams he met her on woodland paths and in mountain fields, the two of them hurrying past each other on unnamed errands. He was already gone by and into the woods or the next field when he realized that had been Cappie just lifting her hand to acknowledge him. When he ran back to find her, she was gone. He felt the mystery of things all around him. He wasn’t even sad, he was only awestruck. He remembered how the professor had said that in olden times you could be changed into a bird, a tree, a crawling troll. . you could become a star or a set of stars, and the stars could speak, and the rocks and the wind could tell you who you were and what was about to happen, the gods or God himself talk to you directly, and an invisible force could be applied — but none of that kind of speech occurs anymore, only an occasional pale, barely coherent whisper remains in the world, the flicker of a conscience, or the sick tug of love that claims to be real. And this had saddened him and he had spoken to rocks and trees himself but nothing talked back. But the professor was wrong about love. It was more than just a whispering thing. It was strong and it held you up. A happiness had overtaken him — his mother was somewhere out there — he knew it. He would wake with tears in his eyes, only a few, and an easefulness in his heart.

He placed the packet of letters beside him on the wall. A small stack, creased and worn already. He leaned down and kissed them and then he got up and walked away.

“I believe I will be shoving off in the morning,” he told Mr. Oliver.

In the old man’s face was a mix of sadness and relief. The relief outweighed the sadness. It hurt Delvin to see it.

Mr. Oliver put his heavy, knobby hand on his. He was wearing a new ring, a chunky gold ring with a crest on it. Delvin started to ask about it, but just then Mrs. Parker brought dessert into the dining room and Mr. Oliver cried out that Delvin was leaving them again and they both began to weep. Casey sat pulled up tight to the table, looking at Delvin as if he wasn’t sure who he was and wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He too was wearing a crusty gold ring. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, Delvin thought. I don’t even know who I am.

He repeated these two sentences to the Ghost later as they sat at the card table the Ghost had set up in the old tack room. He now used the room for a combo bedroom, office, dining room and kitchen.

“Probably all the usual,” the Ghost said. Just the day before he’d got rid of his beard and shaved his hair close; it looked like a bit of orange mist had settled on the top of his pale head.

“You as saucy as ever, aint you?”

“Worse.” The albino half rose from his chair. “Let me show you this.” He pulled a new Placer clasp knife from his pocket and laid it on the table. It looked like a sleek silver fish. When Delvin went to pick it up the Ghost skidded it out of reach, pushed it off the table into his other hand and held it up trophy style.

“You gon show it to me?” Delvin said.

“Your hands dry?”

“Let me see it.”

The Ghost gave him the knife.

“It’s right righteous,” Delvin said, though he had no interest in knives and didn’t open it. Still it had a lovely heft and felt compact and complete. He turned it in his hand. He would like to give Celia something that had this detailed perfection. He handed the knife back. In his pocket he carried an old tape-wrapped Barlow. “I mean,” he said, “I don’t know what I’m going to be doing next. In the next minute.”

“Me, I know my way on down the road. That’s the way I like it too.”

“I don’t know which of us is the lucky one.”

“Maybe neither,” the Ghost said, “not in this world.”

Delvin wondered if the Ghost wasn’t more intelligent than he’d thought.

“You want to go traveling with me?”

“Not for a thousand dollars.”

Delvin was troubled that he didn’t want to go alone. He wondered where the man Frank was by now. Maybe he should go over to the Emporium, get somebody over there to go with him. But he didn’t care to see any of that world again just now. He went back into the house and out onto the porch where by light of a kerosene lamp and sitting beside Mr. Oliver in one of the big pontific arm chairs he read a book the professor had given him, Who Is the Negro Man , by Dr. Quinton Merckson of the University of Pennsylvania. Merckson argued that the negro man was the bearer of the world’s troubles. This was because he had the strength to carry the weight. Delvin had read this sort of thing before, heard it before. He had a tendency to believe what he read, just because what he read was down in print. Later he would sort through it and find out what fit. For tonight he was the able negro man, hauler of the world’s burdens. A soul thing, the doctor said in so many words. The negro man had a deeper and more refined, a nobler soul. He’d heard this from preachers at funeral services. For the trampled-on it always came down to something like that.

He put the book down on a little wicker table and looked over at Mr. Oliver, who was listening to the Adelaide concerto, his favorite Mozart, on the wind-up Victrola, turned down low.