My father stood up straight and said, ‘You said it was seventeen dollars an’ this here is only ‘bout half that.’
‘I ain’t got time t’talk to you, boy. You take what you can git.’
My father stood up taller as if he was trying to get to be as tall as that white man; I got behind him and grabbed onto his pants.
‘You made me a deal, Mr. Mischew, and I want what’s mines.’
‘Niggah?’ the white man exclaimed as he slapped the flat of the blade on his apron. ‘You want sumpin’? ‘Cause you know I’m just the man give it to ya.’
If that white man did much business with my father he must’ve known that he was always soft-spoken and respectful. But when you cheat a man and call him nigger — and his boy is standing there too? Well that was why Mr. Mischew looked so surprised when he found himself flat on his back on the bloody floor.
Mouse cut open a fish and handed the limp corpse over to Dom, who scooped out the entrails and rinsed it in the pond.
I was sick and ashamed of being sick. My head felt hot.
‘Hey, Easy. You don’t look too good, son.’ Mouse smiled gently. ‘Why’ont you take a little nap. We get ya when it’s time t’go Dom’s.’
‘What you need all them fish fo’, man? We cain’t eat all that.’
‘Put ‘em in the smoker,’ Domaque said. ‘Smoke’em up an’ we got fish all the time. Go down t’Miss Alexander an’ trade some fo’drinks in the bar.’ Then he laughed and Mouse laughed and they kept on pulling guts out and tossing them in the water.
‘I’ma go back on t’Houston,’ I said. ‘I ain’t got no mo’ time fo’this mess.’
‘Com’on, Easy, gimme a break.’ Mouse’s mouth made a smile but his eyes were deadly. ‘Dom got a weddin’ gift fo’me but he wanna go fishin’ first. I tole you in the car we gonna go fishin’.’
‘How much longer you wanna be down here?’
‘Just a couple’a mo’ days. Anyway I need ya t’go out t’my stepdaddy’s wit’ me.’
‘Why?’
Mouse pointed a limp gar at me. ‘That man is the devil, Ease. Ain’t no way I can go out there alone.’
‘Com’on, Raymond, I ain’t never known you t’be scared’a nothin’.’
‘I am afraid of him,’ he said.
‘Abraham had cattle and silver and gold,’ Dom was saying as he led us through deep thickets toward his house. ‘An’ Lot was wit’ him an’ so was Abraham’s wife.’
‘What you always sayin’, Dom?’ I asked.
‘Rememberin’ the Bible like Miss Dixon say.’
‘What’s that?’
‘She say that to know the word you gotta make the Bible yo’ own. You gotta know the stories just like they happened t’friends’a yours.’ He laughed and went on, ‘An’ they was so rich that they built diffrent houses an’ after a time they vied fo’the land.’
Mouse came up next to me and said, ‘Dom wanna be a preacher, Ease. He always readin’ the Bible an’ whatnot. You know he’s a well-learnt boy, that ole white woman Dixon make him read ev’rythang.’
‘Who’s that?’ I asked, suddenly jealous of that freak’s knowledge. ‘How come she gonna teach him his letters?’
‘Just a crazy white woman, Ease. She ain’t got no knittin’ so she take on charities.’
We came to the clearing after an hour or so.
Dom’s house was an abandoned molasses shack. It was small and dilapidated but it was also nice because he had flowers growing all around it. Sunflowers on either side and golden wild rose bushes along the pebbled path that led to the front door. There were thick leafy bushes of pink dahlias at odd places in the yard. It looked as though all the flowering plants were wild but I knew they weren’t because there were no weeds to be seen. Sweet pea vines wound up the loose timbers that shored up the east wall of the shack. Purple passion fruit flowers knotted through the ash branches that surrounded the dale. There were other flowers of white and red but I didn’t know what kind they were, and neither did Dom.
Underneath the sweet peas was a clear patch of earth that was covered with the body parts of hard-rubber baby dolls. Arms and feet and heads with golden and brown hair. Mostly they were white dolls like the well-to-do white children have but there were some colored ones too. It looked like a pile of infant corpses washed up from their tiny graves in a terrible storm.
‘You got chirren, Dom?’ I asked.
He gave a high squeal that might have been pleasure and said, ‘Them there is my chirren, Easy.’ Then he chuckled and Mouse did too.
Dom said that his ‘room’ was too small for all us guests, so he went in and came out with three crates for us to sit on. It was very pleasant to sit out there in his wild yard. A garden as beautiful as any I’d seen in the rich part of Houston; it was almost like an inside room or greenhouse only with the sky for a roof. I told Dom how much I liked it and he smiled.
‘I’m always doin’ sumpin’ t’make it bettah,’ he said. ‘I’ma start puttin’ in fruit trees next year an’ by the time they grows maybe I have me a wife t’share ‘em wit’.’ He looked out over his garden with that terrible smile and dead eye.
