Tom Piazza - A Free State

“There!” Trogdon cried. “Why not collar him?”

“He’s looking for a banjo player,” his friend said. “What’s wrong with you?”

A couple of Negroes walked past, looked at them.

Tull approached the old man. He might, Tull thought, know a banjo player if there were money behind the question. Trogdon started to say something, but his friend slapped his arm lightly to quiet him.

“Uncle,” Tull said to the man, “play me a song.”

“You my nephew?” the man said. There was something wrong with him, Tull saw now. Something in the eyes.

“Figure of speech,” Tull said. “Play me a song and I’ll give you a nickel.”

“You play me a song and I’ll give you a dime.”

Tull nodded, started to move away. His instincts were off.

“Next time bring a dollar,” the Negro called after him.

Two more blocks and they paused again. Tull looked up and down the street. Absently, he said, “Do either of you spend time down here?”

“I wouldn’t,” Trogdon said.

“Where would you stay if you were a nigger just came to town?”

Trogdon’s friend, Vic, said, “There’s a place on the other side of Seventh Street.”

Tull had avoided looking closely at this Vic, but now he did. The man wore a graying blond mustache on a lip nudged forward by too-prominent upper teeth; a bead of moisture hung, glistening, at the tip of his nose.

“What kind of place?” Tull said.

“It’s sort of a rooming house, or a warren.”

“How do you know about this place?”

“Ha!” Trogdon said. “Vic’s a ladies’ man!”

“Oh shut up, would you please?” Vic said. “All he ever does is talk, have you noticed?”

Tull looked the man in the eyes.

“It’s like a chicken coop,” Vic said. “Or. . a kennel! A kennel for humans!”

“Show me,” Tull said.

Just past Seventh, on the south side of Lombard, a walkway between two modest wood-frame houses. Down the street two colored girls were playing skip-rope, one of them singing, “ Last night, the night before, twenty-four robbers at my door . .”

“It’s through there,” Trogdon’s friend said. “I don’t know that I want to go in.”

“Then go stand across the street,” Tull said.

“Can I sit on those steps?” he said.

“I don’t care what you do. Stay there, and if you see anybody carrying a banjo, come inside and get me.”

The man looked around nervously.

“You scared of a few niggers?”

“I didn’t say that. I did not say I was afraid.”

“You want your three dollars?”

“Of course I do.”

Tull started across the street. To Trogdon, he said, “You come with me.”

Trogdon’s head was shaking as if he had the palsy.

“I’m glad of that,” Trogdon said, as they walked back across the street. “I wouldn’t much like sitting out here by myself. I had an uncle wrestled a nigger one time at a lumber camp and the nigger turned into a panther. This was before he met his wife. She was no good at all. Goats used to graze all up by Germantown. .”

“All you need to do is wear your hat and sit still,” Tull said. “You’ll get two dollars if you can do that much.”

“Two?” Trogdon said. “I thought it was five.”

“You’ll get five if we find him and take him.”

Tull and Trogdon made their way down the narrow passage to a courtyard where something was cooking in a large pot suspended over a fire. A lone Negro sat on a bench, looking as if he had just come off of a prodigious drunk. Red eyes, and his shoulders in a slouch. Nobody else around as far as Tull could make out. The courtyard was open to the sky, where it was still early afternoon among the sparse clouds.

“How are you today?” Tull said.

Barely looking up, the man said, “Still a nigger.”

Tull chuckled appreciatively. “I got two dollars for somebody’ll tell me where I can find a fellow plays the banjo.”

Looking up now at Tull and squinting, as if to focus, the Negro said, “We got a banjo player here. Good banjo player. He not in now, though.”

“Brownskin?”

The red-eyed man frowned slightly. “Light-complected.”

“Green eyes?”

“I never got that close to him. Eyes like a girl. Where the money?”

“Get up,” Tull said. The man stood. To Trogdon, Tull said, “Sit down there.” Trogdon did so, looking nervously around the courtyard.

“People coming in here giving orders,” the red-eyed man said.

A woman’s voice yelled out, “Jerome, get in your room.” The woman attached to the voice appeared out of one of several little hallways that led into the courtyard. “Get in your God damn room,” she repeated. Then, to Tull: “Who are you?”

“Stay where you are,” Tull said to Jerome. Then, “Just a friend of music, ma’am,” all politeness. He saw the woman look at his hat and frown. “He said you have a banjo player living here?”

“Who you coming around here asking questions?”

“Well,” he said, “I got five dollars here if I can get some help finding this fellow, kind of light-complected, just like he said, plays the banjar. .” He saw her eyes widen briefly, and this told him all he needed to know. He had raised the price somewhat in honor of her apparent rank. “You know anybody like that?”

“Why you want to pay five dollars? That’s a lot of money for white trash like you.”

He started toward her.

“You keep coming at me and I’ll cut you into ribbons, man,” the woman said. She had whipped out a long straight razor from somewhere. Tull stopped. “I’ll cut out that white eye of yours. You like that?”

Trogdon sat on the bench watching, his head trembling, and did not move. Tull forced a smile. “You have that boy here, we will get him and we will take you in along with him. For protecting a fugitive. Maybe you sell a little cooch on the side, too? You’ll be lucky if they don’t chop off those tired-out titties of yours.”

She laughed in his face. “I don’t know who you’re talking about plays the banjo. I like to see them try come here and pick up somebody. I’d like to see that.”

“The law says you’re going to be arrested and locked up. You like to see that?” he said. Watching her closely, he added, “I’ll give you ten dollars.”

“Don’t talk to me about the law. Them police about the sorriest white men I ever saw. Like your friend there. I take care of them, anyway. No police come around here. Go on get out of here before I blow my whistle and they put you on the cooling board.”

To the red-eyed man, Tull said, “Where does the banjo player stay?”

“Down the hall there,” the man said. “Door with the yellow on it.”

“I don’t want to hear that either of you moved or said a word,” Tull said.

“Here—” Trogdon began.

“Shoot them if they move,” Tull said.

Tull drew his pistol and walked toward the nearest of the three passageways that led out of the courtyard. It was very dark and narrow, the only light that which struggled in from the courtyard, behind him. It smelled dank and vegetal. He walked slowly, letting his eyes adjust to the rapidly thickening gloom. A doorway, on his right, painted blue. The outlines of another doorway took shape, on his left. Squinting, Tull made out a faint yellowish tint amid the gray gradations of the remaining light. The door, a plank on rude hinges, was secured from outside with a hook and eyelet. The occupant, whoever it was, could not be inside. Tull unhooked the latch.

A small room, perhaps ten feet square, dim light filtering in through a shuttered window. Tull made out that it was lined with wood, like a ship’s cabin. Drawers, shelves, cubbyholes. A pallet on a low platform took up half the space; a pair of very fine hunting boots sat on the floor. On the pallet were some folded clothes — a shirt, some breeches. And a banjo.