Shadow Country

Now Watson Dyer was barging past, and the carver, sensing danger, withdrew behind his jolly patter. “Aw right, suh! How you feelin this fine evenin? You fixin to try our beautiful roas’ beef?” And Dyer snapped in a hard voice, “Never mind the minstrel show. Just carve.” In the sudden silence in the room, people stopped eating and turned toward them in alarm.

“Mins’rel show?” The carver’s smile congealed and his eyes tightened. “Well, now! Y’all had you a nice day, suh? Look like you needin a big cut of this fine beef.”

“Shut up and carve,” said Dyer with terrific anger, solid and efficient anger, smooth as polished stone.

The carver’s knife was poised over the roast. He stood transfixed like a sculpture called The Carver. Phalanxes of pale faces stared and waitresses clustered in pink-and-white bouquets by the buffet.

The black man squinted at the point of his raised knife. “Hold on, nigguh! You ain’ heard that gen’leman tell you, ‘Cut that mins’rel shit, jus’ carve the roast’?” He honed his knife, snick-snick, snick-snick, appraising the patriotic windbreaker, the cerulean hard eyes. Snick-snick, snick- snick.

“Carve, boy,” Dyer growled in his inexplicable fury. “You’re not paid to play the fool for these old farts.”

“Oh my goodness!” An old fart dropped a radish as her spouse harrumphed in scared protest and the line, milling in panic, clutched its plates. “For Christ’s sake, Dyer!” Lucius, who was right behind him, felt hated by his fellow farts for being associated with a cruel villain out to ruin their heartwarming encounter with this delightful negro personality.

“Playin the fool, tha’s right. Tha’s what you doin, black boy. You ain’t heard the man?” The carver’s voice was low and hard as grated pebbles. “Tha’s all you doin, Mistuh Black Man. Playin the fool.”

“Carve,” Dyer panted, out of breath in the ecstasy of his all-purifying anger.

Summoning him closer with a big mad grin, the carver leaned forward to whisper in his ear as if to share a secret. But the real secret was the knife, which he slid across the carving board on the flat of its handle, just far enough to pink the other’s belly through his shirt. And his pebbly voice grated, “Back off, mothafuck. Get outta my face.” When Dyer sprang back, jarring a table, the carver straightened up again, quaking with mirth, as if this customer had told him some hilarious story. “Yassuh, that sho’ is right!” Using his blade, he was dumping so many slices on Dyer’s plate that the attorney had to lift it high to fend off more bloody meat. “Had enough, my frien’? Doan go to spillin good blood gravy on yo’ shirt.”

Dyer raised his gaze from the big knife and its heaped meat to the bloodshot eyes in the carver’s shining face. The room was still but for the thin scrape of a chair. Lucius watched the black man lick his lower lip, watched his fury weaken, watched his glare slide sideways and the slices fall from the knife.

Dyer dumped his heap of meat onto the cutting board. The carver replaced it with a modest helping. Finding his voice, he mumbled, “Doin my job, tha’s all it is, suh. Makin folks feel good, way they wants it.”

Dyer moved on past. Sending his plate to the table with a waitress, he went straight to the door. A manager was summoned. He displayed his bloodied shirt. Both looked at the carver as they spoke.

Observing this, the black man turned a furious scowl upon Rob Watson, slapping meat down on Rob’s plate. “Happy now? Got what you wanted?” He waved him past with the big knife which he pointed at Lucius’s eyes. “Yes, suh! You know them gen’lemens?”

Lucius nodded. “My brothers.”

“The three brothers! Lo’d A’mighty!” The carver detained him by pressing the knife blade down hard on his plate, pinning the china to the butcher board. “How ’bout you? Got somethin smart you want to say?”

“I want to say that I’m extremely sorry.”

The black man had been summoned from his post. “Sorry?” He stabbed his knife into the carving board, upright and shivering, as the food line yawed and fell away in fright. “I’se the one gets to be sorry! And my woman! And my kids! On account they’s hard times comin in this country and you damn gen’lemans has los’ me my damn job!” He stripped off his bloody apron, balled it up, and hurled it across the steam tables of vegetables onto the soups before banging his way out through the pantry doors.

POWER OF ATTORNEY

The waitress wore a gold chain on her rhinestone glasses, and her ears stuck out through lank black hair like a horse mane. With alarm she watched Dyer attacking his red meat, the knife blade and fork tines grating on the porcelain. “How you folks doin this evenin?” she ventured. “Ever’thin all right?” Unnerved by the attorney’s glare, she fled.

Watson Dyer stabbed at his roast beef, forked it away. He made no mention of the carver. Lucius felt too roiled to eat. Rob was muttering, “It’s all my fault. I’d better go tell his boss.”

“Do it, then,” snapped Lucius.

“Save your breath.” Dyer spoke through a crude mouthful of meat, not looking up. The management, he said, had already expressed gratitude to a valued customer for reporting an outrage by a loudmouth nigger who had never learned his place; their dinner would be complimentary, the culprit fired. He forked another mouthful and chewed swiftly, processing his food while going through his papers.

Dyer briefed them in a rapid-fire manner. Two days hence, a public hearing on the Watson claim would be held in Homestead. He had been assured by colleagues in the judicial system that the claimants might be awarded lifetime use and historical status for the house. Time was short. What he needed at once was full power of attorney, which would give him the authority to make decisions without prior consultation with the family. “It’s quite customary in these matters,” he assured them, pushing a form toward Lucius for his signature. “Authority to act swiftly might be critical.”

Lucius felt rushed. “My signature has to be notarized, isn’t that true?”

“I happen to be a notary,” Dyer said, impatient, already digging in his briefcase for his seal.

Something seemed wrong or missing here but Lucius, still shaken by the episode with the carver and anxious to be done with the whole business, said to hell with it and scrawled his signature.

Rob whistled in alarm. “Oh boy,” he said.

“I want this witnessed by all Watson heirs here present. No exceptions,” Dyer added, turning to Rob. “Not even you.” Extending his pen, he contemplated Rob’s shock with open pleasure.

Rob rose in a lurch of plates, overturning his water glass. He glared at his brother before telling Dyer, “I won’t sign a fucking thing.” The attorney grasped his upper arm and held him by main force. “Hold your horses, Robert.” When Rob stopped struggling, Dyer released him and placed another document beside his plate, rapping it sharply with his knuckle. “Read this first,” he said. Rob glanced at the new document, dropped it on the table, rose again, and headed for the door, where he paused briefly to remonstrate about the carver-in vain, it appeared, for after a brief arm-waving dispute he disappeared.

Dyer addressed his baked potato, which he ate in stolid silence. “How much do you know about him?” he asked finally. “Or should I say, how much do you want to know?”

“His life is his own business.”

“But you suspected something, right?” Dyer put down his fork to make a note. “Why did you never tell me he was Robert Watson?”

“I didn’t know that when we last spoke-not that I would have told you anyway without his permission.”

“Any idea why he changed his name?”

“Why is that any of your concern?” He shrugged. “He hated his father. Took his mother’s name when he ran away.”

“He’s still running away.” Dyer handed him the copy of the prison record, which Lucius glanced at and tossed back. “You knew this, didn’t you?”

“I learned today.”

Dyer grinned his rare thin grin. “Not interested in how I found out?”

“Now that I know you better, I can guess. Cheap Golden Dinner? You lifted his fingerprints? Swiped his spoon?”