“Okay. I’m a reasonable man. Just tell me how much you want and let’s settle this right here and now.”
“I’m a reasonable man myself. First off, I need money to pay my rent. It’s already a week late. That’ll be twenty bucks, please.”
“That’s a lot of money.”
Milton hunched his shoulders. “I know it is. That’s why I want it.”
“Is that all you want?”
He shook his head. His short hair reminded me of cockle-burs. The grease he’d slathered on it could have passed for molasses shining up his forehead. “Well, since you asked, I wouldn’t mind having one of them pinstripe suits y’all sell. A white one. I know I look like a fly in a bowl of buttermilk when I wear that color, but Yvonne and Aunt Mattie’s girls love to see me in it. It shows off my bronze skin tone.” Milton grinned again.
I nodded. “All right,” I mouthed with a heavy sigh. “You’ll have to come back after we close this evening to pick out a suit when I’ll be here by myself. I’ll give you the twenty dollars to pay this month’s rent now, and I’ll throw in a bonus so you can pay next month’s rent too.” I took my wallet out of my pocket and pulled out four ten dollar bills. He snatched them so fast, he almost took my hand, too. “Happy?”
“Hell yeah, I’m happy! I’m going to take Yvonne out to supper this evening when we get off work, so I’ll have to pick up my suit at another time.” He folded the money and slid it into his shirt pocket.
“That’s fine.” I gave him a hard look and wagged my finger in his face. “Milton, you know blackmail is a serious crime.”
His mouth dropped open, and he stood up and reared back on his legs. “Blackmail? Nigger, you crazy!” He waved his arms and shook his head. “This ain’t nothing but a business arrangement. I ain’t never blackmailed nobody before in my life. Shoot!”
I balled my fist and shook it at him. “On top of that, what you doing is a sin, too! I thought you’d found Jesus.”
Milton laughed so hard he got tears in his eyes. He sat back down looking as smug as a tick on a sow’s ear. “You a fine one to be talking about sin! You ain’t got a leg to stand on!”
He was almost right, because when I stood up, I almost fell so I had to plop back down in my chair. I wagged my finger in his face again. “You can call it whatever you want, but you have to promise me that you’ll keep your mouth shut about what you seen in Hartville. Now, I know you know your Bible. If you swear to God that you’ll keep your promise, I’ll feel a whole lot better.”
He licked his finger and used it to cross his heart, which I suspected was even blacker than his hair. “I swear to God I’ll keep my promise.” He cocked his head to one side and gave me a dry look. His pitch-black eyes reminded me of charcoal. “Let me ask you one thing: Why?”
“Why what?”
“You married to a gold mine, man. Why would you risk all that for a piece of tail?”
I exhaled and my shoulders sagged. He’d asked me a question I had asked myself a thousand times, and none of the answers I came up with made much sense. The one I gave Milton was one of the stupidest ever. “It ain’t easy being a man. I didn’t go looking for no woman. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Betty Jean came at me like a gangbuster. If she hadn’t, none of this would have happened. I wouldn’t have never cheated on Joyce on my own.”
“Yeah, right. I bet Betty Jean didn’t have to put no gun up to your head,” he teased.
“No, she didn’t. Her weapon was her beauty. I always wanted me a woman that looked like her, but never thought I’d get in this deep with one. All I really wanted was some tail. I don’t know nobody in Hartville, so I thought I could get away with it.”
“Humph. If a piece of sweet redbone nooky was all you wanted, Aunt Mattie always have two or three working for her at the same time. And, I know where you can find a lot more.”
I shook my head and gave Milton the most exasperated look I could come up with. “What’s wrong with you? You think I’m stupid enough to fool around with a woman in the same town where people know me and my wife?”
“Hell’s bells, man. You went somewhere and got you one where you didn’t think nobody would see you, and I seen you. And if it hadn’t been me, sooner or later somebody else you know would have caught you.”
“Anyway, I thought it would be just a little hanky-panky between me and Betty Jean, but things got out of hand real fast. When she got pregnant the first time, I knew I had to do the right thing. Before I knew it, we had three little boys.”
Milton gave
