there?'
'Don't reckon,' said Earl. 'I don't see how she could help Owney after what he done to Memphis.'
'Earl, you think of them as regular people, whose minds work just like ours. It ain't like that.'
'Sir, one thing I do believe is that they are the same.'
'Earl, you are a hard, strange fellow, I do declare.'
They parked in an alley, and the dogs barked and scuffled. They slipped in a back gate and went up to the door and knocked.
In time, stirrings from inside suggested human habitation. Finally, the door opened a crack, and an old man's face peered out at them, eyes full of the fear that any black man would feel when two large white men in hats showed up knocking after dark.
'No need to worry, pop,' said Earl. 'Don't mean you no harm. Memphis Dogood's gal Marie-Claire gave us your name. We are what they call them Jayhawkers, trying to push the Grumley boys out of town.'
The old man's face lit in delight suddenly. A smile beamed through the eight decades' worth of woeful wrinkles that had meshed his face into a black spider web and for just a second, he was young again, and believed in the righteous way of progress.
'Suhs, I just wanna shake your hand if I may,' said the gendeman, putting out a cottony old hand that felt a hundred years old. Earl shook it, and it was light as a butterfly.
'Do come in, do come in. Lord, Lord, you are the righteous, that I know.'
'We're just polices, sir,' said Earl. 'We do our job, and white or colored don't matter to us.'
'Lord, that be a miracle on earth,' said the old man.
He took them into his living room, which boasted a batch of old chairs and an altar. Up front was a cross. Two candles flickered in perpetual devotion.
'Lord, Lord,' he said. 'Lord, Lord, Lord.'
Then he turned. 'I am the Reverend Jubilee Lincoln, of the New Light Tabernacle. That was the niece of one of my flock them Grumleys done kilt. You remember?'
Earl did. The black girl. At the top of the stairs. Crying, her eyes pumping moisture. The shiver in her whole body, the shakiness in her knees.
'I'm sorry,' said Earl. 'We saved the ones we could. Wasn't nothing we could have done about that gal. It's messy work.'
'Alvina was a wild gal, like her mama, suh,' said the Reverend Jubilee Lincoln. 'Her mama died in a 'hohouse too, sorry to say. The word of Jesus don't mean nothin' to either of them gals, and they paid the price. Her daddy is mighty upset too. That man ain't stopped cryin' all day, ever day, ever since.'
'It does happen that way sometimes,' said D. A. 'Sin begets doom, often as not. But I'm sure she went to heaven. She was walking righteous toward the law when them Grumleys finished her.'
'Amen,' said the Reverend Jubilee Lincoln. 'I want to thank you, suhs. You sent some Grumleys to hell, and specially you sent old Pap Grumley there too, even if you didn't shoot him yo'self. Ain't no white men take so much risk to save cullud gals, as I hear it.'
'We tried, Dr. Lincoln,' said Earl. 'We saved most. It pains us we weren't able to save all.'
He couldn't remember the girl's name even. But he remembered the bullets hitting her and how heavily she fell down the stairs and how she died in his arms.
'Them gambler fellas don't give no two nothin's 'bout no culluds,' said the old man. 'I cleaned toilets and spittoons in the Ohio for fifty years, till I couldn't bend over no more, and nobody never called me nothin' but Jubilee, and nobody never gave nothin' about any of mine or what happened to them, no suh. You two is the only righteous white peoples I ever met.'
Earl took a deep breath. Then he looked at D. A. Then he said, 'You say you were the janitor at the Ohio?'
'Yes suh. Yes suh, and a hard job it be, specially since they put all them damn phones inside and all them boys sit there takin' inf'mation and smokin' and spitdn' and drinkin'. It was a mess most nights.'
'Sir? Would you??'
'Would I what, suh?'
'Would you sign a statement saying you saw a telephone room in the Ohio?'
'That Mr. Maddox and them Grumleys, they like to kill me dead if they find out.'
'It would be dangerous, that's true,' said Earl. 'But we'd keep you protected until it's over.'
'Suh, if them Grumley crackers decide to kill a Negro man in this town, nothin' but the Lord Almighty could stop 'em.'
'Well sir, we're trying to end that kind of thing. End it for good and all.'
The old man considered.
'I reckon, the good Lord's gonna call me to Glory any-hows, soon enough. Been around eighty-seven years. Hell, if it rile them Grumleys up, I be glad to do it!'
Chapter 42
You could not deny how beautiful she was. How a woman could have hair that red, maracas that melony, a waist that narrow, hips that round and legs that long was something on the level of the truly miraculous. Her lips were like strawberries, her eyes green and forever. Everywhere she went, it might as well be spa-ring.
'Virginia, you look so wonderful, darling,' said Owney. 'Cocktail?'
'Fabulous,' said Virginia.
'Martini?'
'Absolutely dah-vine, sugar. Dip the olives in the vermouth, that'll be quite enough.'
'Yes, my dear,' said Owney. 'Ralph, you heard Miss Virginia. Care to come out on the terrace? It's lovely and the view is quite spectacular.'
'Of course. But I want you to show me around. What a fabulous place. It's so New York here. It's a little bit of New York in the heart of little old Arkansas, I do declare!'
'We try, darling. We try so hard.'
'Oh, birds! I never would have guessed.'
They walked to his pigeons, cooing and lowing in their little cages.
'They're adorable. So soft, so cuddly.'
The word soft, pronounced by Virginia Hill above the two most perfect breasts in all of the white world, more beautiful than a Lana's, a Rita's, and Ava's, almost knocked Owney out. He needed a drink, and to focus hard.
Ralph arrived.
'Martini, m'dear?' said Owney. 'Low on the vermouth, as you requested.'
'Sweet as shoefly pie and apple-pan dowdy, I declare.'
She was really laying on her Scarlett O'Hara imitation with a trowel. She took the drink, winked at Owney through it, and…
Gulp!
'That was fabulous. Could Gin-gin have another winky?'
'Ralph, run get Miss Hill another winky.'
'Yes sir,' said Ralph.
Owney took Virginia to look at Central Avenue, hazy in the falling dusk sixteen floors below.
'Ain't it a sight? Sugar, that is some sight. Can't b'lieve it's in the same South where Miz Virginia done growed up. Winky makes Gin-gin feel good. Where Gin-gin growed up was pure Southern-fried dogshit, complete with them uncles couldn't keep them fingers to themselves.'
She threw him a smile, and sort of scrunched her shoulders in a practiced way that seemed to crush the immense breasts together more poetically, as if to mount them on a silver platter and present them for his pleasure.
'Virginia, come sit over here, in the arbor.'
They sat. Gin-gin's second winky arrived. Gulp!
