with people who worshipped the Lord with poisonous snakes or through the speaking of tongues, practices which were part of Grumley life in one way or other.
He was dressed for mourning, all in black, black frock coat, black pants, his black boots, a black hat that could hold twenty gallons, pulled low over his eyes. Eleven coffins filled with Grumleys had been lowered into the ground and words were said over them. All the Grumleys and assorted clans were there, including Pecks, Dodges, Grundys and Pindells. The women and the men were grim in their mourning clothes, their taut mountain faces bleak and severe, their blue eyes gray with pain, their demeanor dignified and stoic, yet hurting massively.
A Grumley preacher said the Lord's words, about how He must have wanted Grumleys in heaven for a peculiar hard job, so He sent for a whole lot of them, to stand by His right hand and help Him spread die Word. But the words he said were not nearly as eloquent as the dance Pap danced.
The spirit moved in him. He tramped in the dust, back and forth, he shivered, he shook, he stamped. The music was unheard by men's ears but came from a part of all the Grumley soul, old mountain music, the whining of a fiddle played by a drunk who'd watched his children die one by one of the pox, and had felt the cold creeping in late at night when blankets were thin and a fiftieth or a sixtieth day of feeding on taters and nothing but had just been finished, with a fifty-first or a sixty-first in view for tomorrow. It was a dance of ancient Scotch-Irish pain and within it lay a racial memory of life on a bleak border and the piping of grief and the wailing of banshees late in the cold night, where a man had to survive on his own for the government belonged to one king or another; it was reiver's music, or plunderer's music, the scream of rural grief, of a way of thinking no city person who didn't fear the harsh Presbyterian God but who had not also run 'shine against the mandates of the Devil City in far-off eastern America, the demon city lodged between Maryland and Virginia, where godless men passed laws meant to take the people's and the Grumleys' freedom and convert it to secret wealth for the casde people, could but feel.
'That man bound to 'splode, look to me,' said Memphis Dogood. 'He is a hurting old boy.'
'He may indeed, old fellow. These Grumley chaps take things like this quite seriously,' said Owney.
Owney and Memphis sat in the back of Owney's bulletproof Cadillac, which had wound down the miles between the Medical Arts Building and this far Grumley compound in a trackless forest just north of Mountain Pine.
Had the Grumleys known a Negro man was one witness to the privacy of their ceremony it is altogether possible they would have hanged him or tarred him, for the Book is explicit in its denunciation of the sons of Ham, and they took the Book at its literal truth. That was what was so Grumley about them. But Owney wanted Memphis to behold the festival of grief that attended the burial of the eleven Grumley dead on the theory that it might get Memphis more talkative than he had heretofore been.
So the two of them watched from leather seats in the back of the V-16?Memphis had never seen such a fine car?as the Grumleys, en masse, and Pap, in particular, mourned.
Pap stamped and the dust rose. Pap twitched and the dust rose. Pap did three this way then three that and the dust rose. He danced amid a fog of dust, the dust coating his boots and trousers into a dusky gray. His face too was gray, set hard, his eyes blank or distant. He folded his arms and gripped his elbows and danced and danced the afternoon away. His back was straight, his neck was stiff, his hips never moved. God commanded his legs alone, and had no use for the rest of him, and so deadened what was left until it reached a form of statuary.
'That boy could dance all night,' said Memphis.
'And into the morrow,' said Owney. 'Now Memphis, you are possibly wondering why I brought you out here.'
'Am I in trouble, Mr. Maddox? Weren't nothin' I could do, 'splained it to the bossman. Didn't say nothin' to nobody. Them revenooer boys, they knowed you had yo' Grumleys spread all over my place. And they was loaded up for bear. Next thing old Memphis know, the Big War done broke out. Ripped up my place right good.'
'I need more. I need the kind of detail a clever man can provide, a shrewd man, who's fooled by nothing in this world. That would certainly be you. A man doesn't last in the brothel profession unless he's a keen judge of character. So you would notice things others might not. Tell me, Memphis, about them. About him.'
'You mean they bossman?'
'Yes.'
'Suh,1 don't mean you no disrespect, but if Grumleys all you got to go agin that boy, then, suh, you be in a peck o' hurt. You be in a tub o' hurt.'
'Describe him, please.'
'Uh, he mean serious bidness.' He scanned his memory for helpful images. 'Nigguhs talk about Bumpy in Harlem.'
Bumpy Johnson. Owney knew Bumpy well. Bumpy used to sit with his own gunman at a back table in the Cotton Club and even the toughest white mobsters avoided him directly. Yes, he saw the comparison, for Bumpy's every motion and dark, hooded eyes said: If you mess with me, I will kill you.
'Bumpy in Harlem. Yes, I knew him.'
'He had that. Whatever Bump had, this boy had it too. Nigguhs can pick that up. A nigguh hafta figger out right quick if a man mean what he say. And this here fella, he surely did. His own dyin' don't mean shit. Don't mean shit.'
'We call him the cowboy,' said Owney.
'My galTrina? She say he worked it upstairs so no nigguh gals git shot. All them bullets flyin', he worried about 'hos gittin' shot. Ain't that nuthin'? Ain't no white man like that down here. Hear tell they got some like that up North, but ain't no white man like that down here.'
'What do you mean, Memphis?'
'He wouldn't shoot no gals. He shot over they heads. So they don't kill no nigguh gals.'
Now this was a new detail that hadn't emerged in Owney's investigations.
The cowboy had something for Negroes? What on earth does that mean?
'And my main gal, Marie-Claire? She say, that ol' Grumley holdin' a gun agin her throat, sayin' he shoot her. Now, suh, you know any white po-lices in America just laugh and say, 'Go'n and shoot that nigguh gall9 Be laughin' all about it! But this here fella, he lif his rifle, aim careful, and hit that las' Grumley right upside the haid. So Marie- Claire twist away, and them other fellas, they hammer that las' Grumley. Ain't no white cop do that, and nobody know that better than Memphis Do-good, I'm tellin' you right, suh. I gots the scars to prove it.'
'You are probably right,' said Owney; he knew that in that situation in every city in America the policemen would have simply fired away, killing both the felon and his hostage and therefore accomplishing two objectives: saving themselves any danger, and providing a highly amusing few seconds.
The cowboy loves the Negro people for some reason.
Interesting.
'Well, you've been very helpful, Memphis.'
'Thank you, suh,' said Memphis Dogood.
'Unfortunately, I can't drive you home.'
'Suh?'
'Yes. Can't be seen with you. You know, appearances, all that. Those fellows over there, they'll take care of you.'
'Mr. Maddox, them's Grumley boys and?'
'Nothing to worry about, old man. You have my guarantee.'
He smiled. The door was opened, and Owney's driver leaned in, put his large hand on Memphis's shoulder, and directed him outward.
Some Grumley boys, young ones, watched, then began to mosey over to Memphis.
Chapter 28
Among the many things his colleagues did not know about Walter F. (formerly 'Shorty' and now 'Frenchy') Short was the following: he was wealthy.
Not rich, not a millionaire, not a playboy, a polo player or a 'movie producer,' but still he had a private
