noticed something had eaten off the tips of the feathers.
Oh well, I didn’t wear the bonnet anymore. I had outgrown playing cowboys and Indians. I had even stored my Davy Crockett coonskin cap away in my wooden chest. I now found the idea of running around the yard on an invisible horse with a racoon’s hide on my head, or an Indian war bonnet, foolish.
I crutched back to the bed and lay down. I used Larry to scratch inside my cast, and gave up thinking about Margret for a while.
7
NEXT DAY I spent in a lawn chair pulled up next to the projection booth, residing in its shade, reading a book by Edgar Rice Burroughs called
I paused briefly to stretch, realized the sun was falling away. I was amazed to discover I had spent all day, except for a brief bathroom trip and time for lunch, in that chair reading.
Late as it had become, it was still hot as a griddle, and when I returned to my book, sweat ran down my face.
“You better get you a hat, boy. Only an idiot sits out in the sun like that.”
I turned, startled. Nub raised his head for a look, lowered it again and closed his eyes.
It was Buster Abbot Lighthorse Smith, carrying two paper sacks. One was wrapped tight around a bottle. The lid and neck of it stuck out of the top. He was unlocking the projection booth, sliding inside.
He left the door open to let the heat out. He had a fan in there and he lifted it and sat it on a chair and turned it on. It could swing from left to right, but he had screwed it down so it wouldn’t move. He sat in a chair across from it and opened the top of his paper sack, produced a church key, and popped the top off the bottle and took a swig.
“Shit,” he said, when he brought the bottle down. “Don’t ever take to this stuff, boy. Seen it knock many a nigger low, and it won’t do a white boy no good neither. You put this in a Mason jar lid, bugs will get in it and die. That ought to tell you somethin’. So, you don’t want none of this.”
“No, sir.”
He pulled the sack down and revealed an RC Cola.
“Had you fooled, didn’t I?”
“Yes, sir.”
But I could smell alcohol, and knew he had been hitting the liquor before arriving.
“I’m just kiddin’. Wouldn’t want you to think I’m drinkin’ on the job. Your daddy might not like that, and I wouldn’t want to have to go find some job shoveling gravel in this hot sun. How’s that book? That the one where Tarzan finds them dinosaurs, people that’s got tails.”
“You’ve read it.”
“You think niggers don’t read.”
“I didn’t say that.”
Buster laughed.
“See you got you a plate by your chair. You eat out here?”
“Lunch. Rosy Mae brought it to me.”
“That old fat nigger gal?”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing. I had never had a conversation with Buster before, and this one seemed out of character. He was usually broody and sullen, his brows knit up tight. But I guessed he’d nipped enough before arriving today to feel friendly.
Daddy knew he drank, but so far it had not affected Buster’s job, and therefore had not been a real problem.
“You know today’s my birthday?” he said.
“No, sir.”
“Well it is. You know how old I am?”
“No, sir.”
“Guess.”
“Forty?”
He laughed. “You tryin’ to flatter me, little boy, that what you’re tryin’ to do? I ain’t seen forty in a long time. Try seventy-one.”
“Try seventy-eight if you a day,” Rosy Mae said.
She had come out of the house with a glass of lemonade for me. In spite of her size, way she walked, she moved silent as an Indian when she wanted to. I hadn’t even heard the gravel crunch.
“You don’t know nothin’, woman.”
“I know what you full of. You ain’t seen seventy in at least eight or nine years.”
“Well, I don’t look seventy, now do I?”
“Sure you do. You look about a hundred and forty-five, you axe me.”
“You go on back in the house. Me and the young man here was talkin’. This ain’t none of your business. Why don’t you get in there and fry up some chicken or somethin’. I could use some chicken myself. I ain’t got nothin’ but a bologna sandwich in this bag.”
“And about two quarts a whiskey in you already, ’bout half a bottle of that there is RC, rest full of cheater.”
“Now I was just tellin’ the boy here to stay away from alcohol, wasn’t I, boy? And he saw me open this bottle. Ain’t that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why don’t you get on in the house, Mr. Stanley. I got some cookies I done made fresh for you in there. I’ll carry yo’ lemonade back for you. You don’t need to be hangin’ around out here with this old man.”
“Yes, ma’am. Happy birthday, sir.”
“You damn right it’s happy. Happy, happy, happy.”
I slipped the Tarzan book into my back pocket, started crutching for the inside, Rosy Mae following, Nub dragging up the train.
As we went inside, Buster called out to Rosy, “Your ass looks like two greased pigs squirmin’ up against one another in a sack, woman. But I want you to know I ain’t got nothin’ against pork.”
“Least they happy pigs,” she said. “Ain’t nothin’ happy about you.”
“They so happy, why don’t you take ’em out of the sack and let ’em smile, run around a bit.”
“You ain’t never gonna see these here pigs, you ole fool.”
———
INSIDE AT THE TABLE, I said, “Is he really over seventy?”
“He been around long ’fo I was born. Around when my mama a girl. But he right, he don’t look it. He look pretty good, actually. Got that white kinky hair and all.”
“It’s black, Rosy Mae.”
“No, it’s white, and looks better when he leaves it white, and he used to. He got to puttin’ shoe polish on it now.”
“Shoe polish?”
“That’s right. Get up close, you can smell it. Makes him look smart he leaves it white. And he is smart, not like me.”
“You’re not stupid, Rosy Mae. I told you that.”
“Well, I ain’t educated.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“Thing about Buster is I don’t like him.”
“You sound like you like him.”
“Do I? Well, he could be liked he didn’t drink. I done had me a drinkin’ man. I ain’t gonna have me another. ’Sides, he too old for me. And he got a mean streak. Not bad as Bubba’s, I guess, but I’m all through with them mean men and moody men.”
“He doesn’t sound like he likes you, Rosy.”
