The muscles in Grave Digger's face began to jump as he let go of Bucky. He stood up with his heels hooked into the rungs of the barstool and leaned over the bar. He caught the barman by the front of his red silk shirt as he was trying to dance away. The shirt ripped down the seam with a ragged sound but enough held for him to jerk the barman close to the bar.
'You got too goddamned much to say, Tarbelle,' he said in a thick cottony voice, and slapped the barman spinning across the circular enclosure with the palm of his open hand.
'He didn't have to do that,' the first woman said.
Grave Digger turned on her and said thickly, 'And you, little sister, you and me are going to see Reba.' 'Reba!' her companion replied. 'Do I know anybody named Reba. Lord no!' Grave Digger stepped down from his high stool. 'Cut that Aunt Jemima routine and get up off your ass,' he said thickly, 'or I'll take my pistol and break off your teeth.' The two white men stared at him as though at a dangerous animal escaped from the zoo. 'You mean that?' the woman said. 'I mean it,' he said. She scrunched out of the stool and said, 'Gimme my coat, Jule.' The chocolate dandy took a coat from the top of the jukebox behind them. 'That's putting it on rather thick,' the blond white man protested in a reasonable voice. 'I'm just a cop,' Grave Digger said thickly. 'If you white people insist on coming up to Harlem where you force colored people to live in vice-and-crime-ridden slums, it's my job to see that you are safe.' The white man turned bright red.
8
The sergeant knocked at the door. He was flanked by two uniformed cops and a corporal.
Another search party led by another sergeant was at the door across the hail.
Other cops were working all the corridors starting at the bottom and sealing off the area they'd covered.
'Come in,' Granny called in a querulous voice. 'The door ain't locked.' She bit the stem of her corn-cob pipe with toothless gums.
The sergeant and his party entered the small kitchen. It was crowded.
At the sight of the very old woman working innocently at her darning, the sergeant started to remove his cap, then remembered he was on duty and kept it on.
'You don't lock your door, Grandma?' he observed.
Granny looked at the cops over the rims of her ancient spectacles and her old fingers went lax on the darning egg.
'Naw suh, Ah ain't got nuthin' for nobody to steal and ain't nobody want nuthin' else from an old 'oman like me.'
The sergeant's beady blue eyes scanned the kitchen. 'You keep this place mighty clean, Grandma,' he remarked in surprise.
'Yes suh, it don't kill a body to keep clean and my old missy used to always say de cleaness is next to the goddess.'
Her old milky eyes held a terrified question she couldn't ask and her thin old body began to tremble.
'You mean goodness,' the sergeant said.
'Naw suh, Ah means goddess; Ah knows what she said.'
'She means cleanliness is next to godliness,' the corporal interposed.
'The professor,' one of the cops said.
Granny pursed her lips. 'Ah know what my missy said; goddess, she said.'
'Were you in slavery?' the sergeant asked as though struck suddenly by the thought.
The others stared at her with sudden interest.
'Ah don't rightly know, suh. Ah 'spect so though.'
'How old are you?'
Her lips moved soundlessly; she seemed to be trying to remember.
'She must be all of a hundred,' the professor said.
She couldn't stop her body from trembling and slowly it got worse.
'What for you white 'licemen wants with me, suh?' she finally asked.
The sergeant noticed that she was trembling and said reassuringly, 'We ain't after you, Grandma; we're looking for an escaped prisoner and some teenage gangsters.'
'Gangsters!'
Her spectacles slipped down on her nose and her hands shook as though she had the palsy.
'They belong to a neighbourhood gang that calls itself Real Cool Moslems.'
She went from terrified to scandalized. 'We ain't no heathen in here, suh,' she said indignantly. 'We be Godfearing Christians.'
The cops laughed.
'They're not real Moslems,' the sergeant said. 'They just call themselves that. One of them, named Sonny Pickens, is older than the rest. He killed a white man outside on the street.'
The darning dropped unnoticed from Granny's nerveless fingers. The corncob pipe wobbled in her puckered mouth; the professor looked at it with morbid fascination.
'A white man! Merciful hebens!' she exclaimed in a quavering voice. 'What's this wicked world coming to?'
'Nobody knows,' the sergeant said, then changed his manner abruptly. 'Well, let's get down to business, Grandma. 'What's your name?'
'Bowee, suh, but e'body calls me Granny.'
'Bowee. How do you spell that, Grandma?'
'Ah don't rightly know, suh. Hit's just short for boll weevil. My old missy name me that. They say the boll weevil was mighty bad the year Ah was born.'
'What about your husband, didn't he have a name?'
'Ah neber had no regular 'usban', suh. Just whosoever was thar.'
'You got any children?'
'Jesus Christ, sarge,' the professor said. 'Her youngest child would be sixty years old.'
The two cops laughed; the sergeant reddened sheepishly.
'Who lives here with you, Granny?' the sergeant continued.
Her bony frame stiffened beneath her faded Mother Hubbard. The corncob pipe fell into her lap and rolled unnoticed to the floor.
'Just me and mah grandchile, Caleb, suh,' she said in a forced voice. 'And Ah rents a room to two workin' boys; but they be good boys and don't neber bother nobody.'
The cops grew suddenly speculative.
'Now this grandchild, Caleb, Grandma — ' the sergeant began cunningly.
'He might be mah great-grandchile, suh,' she interrupted.
He frowned, 'Great, then. Where is he now?'
'You mean right now, suh?'
'Yeah, Grandma, right this minute.'
'He at work in a bowling alley downtown, suh.'
'How long has he been at work?'
'He left right after supper, suh. We gennally eats supper at six o'clock.'
'And he has a regular job in this bowling alley?'
'Naw suh, hit's just for t'night, suh. He goes to school — Ah don't rightly 'member the number of his new P.S.'
'Where is this bowling alley he's working at tonight?'
'Ah don't know, suh. Ah guess you all'll have to ast Samson. He is one of mah roomers.'
'Samson, yeah.' The sergeant stored it in his memory. 'And you haven't seen Caleb since supper — about seven o'clock, say?'
'Ah don't know what time it was but it war right after supper.'
