“Well, whatever it is, it must be something real good. I never see you this excited unless it’s in the bedroom,” I said, poking her crotch.
She looked exasperated as she slapped my hand. “Later on for that. Anyway, a nice couple moved in the house next door this morning and they’re just a few years younger than us. I already went over and introduced myself, and they seem like the kind of people that like to have fun.”
The Copelands, the grumpy elderly couple who had lived in the house next door, had moved out two weeks ago. They had been a major pain in our butts since the day we moved to the neighborhood. I was glad that they’d moved to Miami to be closer to their son. I was surprised to hear that new neighbors had moved in already. “Oh. That’s nice.”
“I can’t wait to get acquainted with them. It’ll be nice to have some young people one house over for me to visit while you’re off fishing or out there fussing with your daddy and his crazy-ass wife,” Joyce said, grinning. I didn’t think us getting new neighbors close to our age was anything to get that excited about. But it didn’t take much to excite Joyce. She sounded like a little kid on Christmas morning.
“I can’t wait for us to get acquainted with them too. Where did they move here from?”
“They’ve lived right here in Branson all their lives. But on the lower south side.” Joyce dropped her voice to almost a whisper, like she was afraid our new neighbors could hear what she was fixing to say about them. “Uh, the only thing is, they’re bootleggers.”
“They sell illegal alcohol? Hmmm.” I exhaled and scratched the side of my head. “That’s a mighty risky business.”
“Tell me about it. But they don’t seem to care who knows it. The wife didn’t waste any time telling me.”
“Hmmm. Most of the bootleggers I ever knew was well up in age and couldn’t find no other way to make money. Oh well,” I said, hunching my shoulders and shaking my head. “Whatever our new neighbors do, it’s their business.”
“I feel the same way. They seem like nice enough people and I still can’t wait to get to know them. But I don’t know just how close we should get to bootleggers. Most of the ones I know are real shady and rowdy.”
“Well, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. Unless they do or say something to offend us or make us feel unsafe, we’ll do all we can to make them feel welcome. What’s their names?”
“Yvonne and Milton Hamilton. She’s real cute. Looks like a little colored Kewpie doll and knows it. I could tell by the way she kept slinging that long hair of hers.”
“So what? If a woman is cute, she’d be pretty dumb if she didn’t know it. What about the husband?”
Joyce shook her head and gave me a pitiful look. “Dogmeat. He’s short and tubby, beady-eyed, moon-faced, and real countrified. His hair looks like a black sheep’s ass. I wonder what in the world a woman as good-looking as Yvonne sees in Milton. But wait until you see the way they look at each other. I can tell they are very much in love. They’ve been married for a few years, but they act like they are still in the honeymoon stage.”
“Just like us, huh?” I poked Joyce’s crotch again. She didn’t slap my hand this time.
“Just like us,” she agreed. And then she led me to the bedroom.
Chapter 26
Joyce
AFTER ODELL AND I MADE LOVE, WE GOT BACK UP AND ATE THE lima beans and gizzards I had cooked for dinner. He was anxious to meet our new neighbors, so we decided to visit them this evening before it got too late.
“Shouldn’t we take them something else other than them tea cakes you baked?” he wanted to know, standing next to me while I wrapped the plate with the tea cakes in wax paper.
“Like what?”
“Well, like a bottle of wine? That’s what my folks used to take over to new neighbors when I was growing up.”
“Wine?” I laughed. “The Hamiltons are bootleggers. If they are in the business of selling alcohol, I’m sure they already have enough of it on hand already. If they don’t, they won’t be in business too long.” I laughed again.
During Prohibition, which had ended five years ago, people had to make their own alcohol or get it from bootleggers. Even though we had a lot of bars in Branson now, all of the nice ones were for white folks only. The few owned by colored people often ran out of alcohol too soon, or had to close for a few days for one reason or another. Usually when the people got too rowdy. The people I knew preferred to continue dealing with the bootleggers anyway. I could understand why. They didn’t care how rowdy somebody got in their houses, as long as they didn’t kill anybody. Most of them stayed open all hours of the day and night, seven days a week. Also, sitting in a nice house drinking with friends made people feel a lot more comfortable. And, the majority of the bootleggers had shady backgrounds, so they couldn’t get liquor licenses. They bought their alcohol from the local moonshiners and sold it a lot cheaper than the bars and stores.
Yvonne opened her front door and greeted us with a huge smile. “Girl, I was just talking about you. Y’all come on in,” she squealed, waving us into her living room. “You must be Odell.” She grabbed his hand and started shaking it so hard, I was surprised it didn’t fall off. “That’s Willie Frank, our best friend,” she introduced, nodding toward a slender, barefoot white man sitting on the beige couch with a Mason jar in his hand. He had on a dingy white shirt and brown
