Joe Lansdale - A Fine Dark Line

“Oooooeeee,” she said. “I needed that.”

She began coughing almost immediately.

“I don’t need that none. Hit me on the back, Mr. Stanley.”

I did, sharply.

“Thanks. It done went down the wrong pipe.”

“You don’t need to call me Mr.,” I said. “I’m just a boy.”

“Yessuh, but you a white boy.”

“Call me Stanley.”

“All right, Stanley.”

“This man of yours . . . Is he dangerous?”

“Scares me. I know some niggers run the other way they see him comin’. I carries me a razor.”

Rosy Mae reached into a fold of her dress and produced it, flicked it open. The blade lapped like a tongue, cut some darkness, flicked closed, went into her dress.

“He carry one too, though. And he done cut folks with his. I ain’t never cut nobody. But I did threaten me a nigger with it once. He got on my wrong side, that’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you. But I don’t want to cut nobody. ’Specially him.”

“You love him?”

“I shuly do, Stanley. I do. I don’t know why and shouldn’t, but I do. I ought to take the ole chicken axe to him, but I won’t. He don’t do nothin’ but make me crazy and sad. He messes with other women, drinks somethin’ awful, plays them cards, shoots that dice all the time. He ain’t no good at all.”

“Then why do you love him?”

“I couldn’t begin to tell, honey. I ain’t got no reason. Men’s got their reasons, and they reasons ain’t much and don’t last long. But a woman. She ain’t got no real reason. She jes’ does.”

“But you’re scared of him?”

“I am. I loves him, but I hates him too.”

“Does he love you?”

“I don’t know he loves nobody. He don’t even love himself. And Mr. Stanley . . . Stanley. You got to love yo’self ’fore you can love most anything. Even if’n it’s a flower, or some old bush you a growin’. You hear what I’m sayin’?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You so polite.”

“So you think he could hurt you?”

“I do. But don’t jedge on him too hard. You know what the Bible say about not jedgin’ least you be jedged yo’self?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Well it says that. Somewhere. Or so I been told by a preacher, but since he had his hand on my knee, I don’t know he was tellin’ the truth. I told him, you maybe ought not to jedge, but I sho ought to tell you to get yo’ hand off my knee. And he did . . . Bubba Joe, he done had it hard, Mr. Stanley.”

“Just Stanley.”

“Yes, suh. He done been put down by the white mens hard.”

“White men? How?”

Rosy Mae laughed. “Oh, chile, you just the sweetest thing. And don’t know nothin’, and that good right now, ’cause someday you’ll know somethin’ and you gonna be different. All coloreds be niggers then.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I hope you right, honey. I truly do.”

“How’s he been put down, Rosy Mae?”

Rosy Mae sucked at her cigarette, blew smoke in a little white cloud that hung about her nose, spread, and faded.

“He a man, Stanley. Jes’ like you gonna be when you grow up. Like yo daddy. He a man. And Bubba Joe, he treated like a boy. White man calls him boy, and he a grown man. Bigger than most men you ever see. He six three, weigh near three hundred pounds. Stong as an ox. And I tell you another thing. He a war hero.”

“Really?”

“That’s right. He go over there to Korea, and he a hero. Got him a wound that cause him to walk a little stiff. But when he come back, come into Dallas, he told to go to the back of the bus. Told he can’t eat with white folks. He mean ’cause of them ways he been treated, Stanley. Way his family been treated.

“When he a boy, them Kluxers, they hear Bubba Joe’s daddy stole a watermelon and a chicken ’cause his family hungry, and they take Bubba Joe’s daddy down in them bottoms and whup him good. Then they take off his clothes, and they got this big ole cottonmouth in a tow sack, and they make his daddy put his foot in that bag with that snake, and they tie the bag around his leg and waist so he can’t shake it off, and they tie his hands behind his back and leave him.”

I had a sensation like someone rubbing an ice cube along the top of my skull.

“What did he do?”

“Well, Bubba Joe get this story from his daddy, and he tell it to me on one of his good times, when he’s happy I’m with him. Say his daddy can’t just stay in the woods till either he or the snake dies, so he try to walk home. He do all right at first, then the snake slip down to the bottom of the bag, and he step on it, and it gets its fangs hung in the bag. Now, he thinks he can walk on while the snake’s hung up, and he do good for a time, then the snake works loose, and he bites Bubba Joe’s daddy, and by the time he get to the house, he done been bit, three, fo’ times.”

“Did he die?”

“Might near. But they take him over to a colored man works on horses and such, and he cuts the leg off ’cause it done turned black as the bottom of a well, and swole up big as an oak tree trunk. Bubba Joe’s daddy lives, but now he can’t work no mo’. And he turns mean. He gave some of that mean to Bubba Joe. Coloreds got reason to be mean, but it may be worse on a colored man ’cause he don’t never get to be no man ’cept in his own house, and he overdo it. He knows he goes out, he jes’ another nigger. Some little white boy comes along, he got to step off the sidewalk. Little white boy can call him boy, and he has to grin and live with it. Wears on a person.”

“Does it wear on you, Rosy Mae?”

“Yes, chile. It shuly does. But all that said, it ain’t no excuse for doin’ the wrong thing to people. They’s lots of people ain’t happy, but you don’t get no happier makin’ people unhappy. Least you shouldn’t. Well, I done smoked my smoke. We ought to go on back down see there’s anything we can do ’sides set a fire and rob a bank.”

“Rosy Mae? Do you know anything about the house that stood where those trees are?” I pointed in the direction of the pine stand beside the drive-in.

“That ole place belong to the Stilwinds. They a big important family, and they still ’round here. That house, burn down on the same night little Miss Margret Wood was messed with and murdered. And when it burn down, it burn up that young Stilwind girl, Jewel Ellen. Hard to believe how fast them pine trees growed up after that house burned down. That was in, let me see, nineteen and forty-five. ’Course, that ole oak and some of them elms and them sweet gums out to the side there, they always been there long as I can remember. They jes’ bigger.”

“Who was Miss Margret?”

“Why she a young girl then, about fifteen. I think me and her about the same age when that happen.”

“Who murdered her?”

“Ain’t nobody know.”

“Was she murdered in that house?”

“Where you get such an idea? Miss Jewel Ellen die in that house. In the fire. Miss Margret, she killed over by the tracks. Someone do somethin’ mean to her. And Mr. Stanley, you and me don’t need to talk about what that was. That ain’t for me and you to discuss. But I tell you she was laid out with her head put on them railroad tracks, an’ that ole train come along and cut it right off. That’s what I hear, anyway. They never did find her head. Say her ghost still wander down there, where the woods run close to the tracks. That’s where she was murdered. They was this man say he thought he saw an ole stray dog runnin’ along down there with that head in its mouth. But that could have been a wolf. Or a wolf’s man.”

“A wolf’s man?”

“Mr. Stanley—”

“Stanley.”

“Stanley. White folks don’t believe this, lot of coloreds don’t. But I believes there’s mens can turn themselves into wolfs and such. That a wolf’s man. Like the movie with the wolf’s man. I ain’t sayin’ no wolf’s man got her head now, I’m jes’ sayin’ could have been. It might have been an ole stray dog or other varmints. It might have been smashed like a pumpkin when that train hit her. It might have been cut off ’fo she was put on the tracks. Ain’t no one ever find Miss Margret’s head. But they say her ghost down there lookin’ for her head most nights and I believe that. I ain’t never seen it myself, but I done hear on it plenty from them has.”