down by Grennel Bog on my way to Nigger town.... Well the bog makes a bend, used to be nigger shack there.... They burned that ol' nigger over in Cunt Lick. Nigger had the aftosa and it left him stone blind.... So this white girl down from Texarkana screeches out:
''Roy, that ol' nigger is looking at me so nasty. Land's sake I feel just dirty all over.'
''Now, Sweet Thing, don't you fret yourself. Me an' the boys will burn him.'
''Do it slow, Honey Face. Do it slow. He's give me a sick headache.'
'So they burned the nigger and that ol' boy took his wife and went back up to Texarkana without paying for the gasoline and old Whispering Lou runs the service station couldn't talk about nothing else all Fall: 'These city fellers come down here and burn a nigger and don't even settle up for the gasoline.'
'Well, Chester Hoot tore that nigger shack down and rebuilt it just back of his house up in Bled Valley. Covered up all the windows with black cloth, and what goes on in there ain't fittin' to speak of.... Now Chester he's got some right strange ways.... Well it was just where the nigger shack used to be, right across from the Old Brooks place floods out every Spring, only it wasn't the Brooks place then... belonged to a feller name of Scranton. Now that piece of land was surveyed back in 1919.... I reckon you know the man did the job too.... Feller name of Hump Clarence used to witch out wells on the side.... Good ol' boy too, not a finer man in this Zone than Hump Clarence.... Well it was just around about in there I come on Ted Spigot ascrewin a mud puppy.' Lee cleared his throat. The Clerk looked up over his glasses. 'Now if you'll take care, young feller, till I finish what I'm asaying, I'll tend to your business.' 87
And he plunged into an anecdote about a nigra got the hydrophobia from a cow.
'So my pappy says to me: 'Finish up your chores, son, and let's go see the mad nigger....' They had that nigger chained to the bed, and he was bawling like a cow.... I soon got enough of that ol'
nigger. Well, if you all will excuse me I got business in the Privy Council. He he he!' Lee listened in horror. The County Clerk often spent weeks in the privy living on scorpions and Montgomery Ward catalogues. On several occasions his assistants had forced the door and carried him out in an advanced state of malnutrition. Lee decided to play his last card. 'Mr. Anker,' he said,
'I'm appealing to you as one Razor Back to another,' and he pulled out his Razor Back card, a memo of his lush- rolling youth.
The Clerk looked at the card suspiciously: 'You don't look like a bone feed mast-fed Razor Back to me.... What you think about the Jeeeeews... ?'
'Well, Mr. Anker, you know yourself all a Jew wants to do is doodle a Christian girl.... One of these days well cut the rest of it off.'
'Well, you talk right sensible for a city feller.... Find out what he wants and take care of him.... He's a good ol' boy.'
88
INTERZONE
The only native in Interzone who is neither queer nor available is Andrew Keif's chauffeur, which is not affectation or perversity on Keif's part, but a useful pretext to break off relations with anyone he doesn't want to see: 'You made a pass at Aracknid list night. I can't have you to the house again.' People are always blacking out in the Zone, whether they drink or not, and no one can say for sure he didn't make a pass at Aracknid's unappetizing person.
Aracknid is a worthless chauffeur, barely able to drive. On one occasion he ran down a pregnant woman in from the mountains with a load of charcoal on her back, and she miscarriaged a bloody, dead baby in the street, and Keif got out and sat on the curb stirring the blood with a stick while the police questioned Aracknid and finally arrested the woman for a violation of the Sanitary Code.
Aracknid is a grimly unattractive young man with a long face of a strange, slate-blue color. He has a big nose and great yellow teeth like a horse. Anybody can find an attractive chauffeur, but only Andrew Keif could have found Aracknid; Keif the brilliant, decadent young novelist who lives in a remodeled pissoir in the red light district of the Native Quarter. The Zone is a single, vast building. The rooms are made of a plastic cement that bulges to accommodate people, but when too many crowd into one room there is a soft plop and someone squeezes through the wall right into the next house, the next bed that is, since the rooms are mostly bed where the business of the Zone is transacted. A hum of sex and commerce shakes the Zone like a vast hive:
'Two thirds of one percent. I won't budge from that figure; not even for my bumpkins.'
'But where are the bills of lading, lover?'
'Not where you're looking, pet. That's too obvious.'
'A bale of levies with built-in falsie baskets. Made in Hollywood.'
