“Oh, he likes me all right. I can tell.”
Rosy Mae went away to attend to other matters. I sat drinking lemonade, eating cookies. I pulled the Tarzan book from my pocket and went back to reading, but I didn’t read long.
I crutched outside, Nub beside me. I think he really wanted to stay inside in the fan-cooled room, but he followed me. He had that sort of dutiful stride he adopted when he was working against his will. Moving fast, head down, tail swinging. A dog on a mission.
It was near dark now and the movie would be starting before long. I leaned on my crutches and looked at all the speaker posts sticking up like runted trees, at the projection booth and the back fence, thought about what was beyond it.
Buster was sitting in my lawn chair with his RC. He called across the lot to me.
“You finally shake that old witch?”
I didn’t want Rosy Mae to hear that kind of talk, so I started working my crutches, heading on over to him.
“Me and Rosy Mae are friends,” I said.
“You are? Go over to her house a lot?”
“She lives here.”
“Where you keep her?”
“She sleeps on the couch.”
“Not good enough for a bed?”
“We don’t have another bed. She’s staying with us until she can do otherwise.”
“How come she’s stayin’ with you?”
I didn’t think that was any of his business, so I said, “She just doesn’t have a place to live right now.”
“What you mean when you say friends, is she waits on you, takes care of you. But that don’t make you friends.”
“It’s her job. She gets paid for it.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bet it ain’t even half what a white woman would get to do that kind of work.”
“I don’t know any white women who do that kind of work.”
“True enough. Now think on that.”
“Well, I got to go back.”
I turned to go, and Nub, who had once again lay down on the ground, stood up. He sort of let out his breath, seeming to suggest I was a boy who couldn’t make up his mind.
“Hey, it’s my birthday. I could use a little company. That dog, he’s somethin’ way he follows you around.”
“That’s Nub,” I said. “He’s a good dog.”
“Yeah, he looks all right. Ain’t nothin’ like a good dog, is there?”
“No, sir.”
“How’d you do that to your leg?”
I told him. I didn’t mention that I went in the Stilwind house, but when I finished, he said, “You must have got scared up the house on the hill, way you’re talkin’. Scared enough to ride out in front of a truck.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, but I can tell. I always hear that house is haunted. Kids think that. It ain’t though. You know what you saw?”
“I didn’t say I saw anything.”
“You saw old Mrs. Stilwind. She’s crazy. Runs off from where she is in the old folks home, goes up there. Ain’t no one gets in any kind of hurry to go fetch her. They know where she is. They go up there and get her when it pleases them. She comes to that house through the back, where the woods are. There’s a trail, leads right to the old folks home. Didn’t know that, did you?”
“You’re sure?”
“I know coloreds work at the old folks home, wipe them old white asses and give them their green peas. They tell me about it. Now, I could be just yarn’n you, but which yarn sounds more likely? Think about it. Don’t knowin’ it could have been Mrs. Stilwind make what you saw up there less spooky?”
“I guess.”
“Then you did see her?”
“I saw a shadow that looked like an old woman.”
“You could have seen just what you thought you saw. Shadow of an old woman. Not a ghost. Life has some clear answers, and then it has things where the questions ain’t even clear. Ain’t like in a movie where it all comes together all the time. You know who Sherlock Holmes is?”
“I’ve seen him on TV.”
“Read the stories. Mr. Sherlock Holmes got a sayin’ go somethin’ like this. Take away the possible from somethin’, show that ain’t it, whatever is left, no matter how impossible, is it. That’s what he says. Or somethin’ close to it. But you see, first you got to get rid of the possible.
“You got to look at a thing careful-like. If you done set to believe somethin’, you got to know you likely to believe it even if there ain’t no truth there. Followin’ me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m just talkin’, ain’t I?”
“That’s all right.”
Buster paused as if considering a math problem. He took a drink of his RC, wiped his mouth.
“I want to tell you somethin’, boy, and keep it quiet. I been drinkin’. I try not to drink on the job. Well, just a little nip now and then. But today, my seventy-fourth birthday, I’m nippin’. It’s makin’ me talk. Don’t mean nothin’ by it. Ain’t normally this friendly. But I got enough hooch in me, and it’s my birthday, so, I’m friendly. You savvy that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“While ago”—he pulled a metal flask from inside his lunch sack as he talked—“I added me some of this to my RC. So I’m goin’ at it steady. I don’t know why I’m tellin’ this. You ain’t gonna tell your old man are you? He’d fire me. And maybe he ought to.”
“No, sir. I mean, I don’t plan to.”
Buster nodded, said, “Gonna be dark in about half hour. They be comin’ in here in droves see this John Wayne cowboy movie. I’m looking forward to it myself and I watch it every night. You don’t got no better seat than right here in the projection booth. You at the source here, son. Come on in. I ain’t gonna bite.”
Buster got up from the lawn chair and went inside the booth. I didn’t really want to go inside with him, drinking like he was, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings either. I crutched after him, Nub bringing up my heels.
Buster snapped open a round box, took out a reel, rolled it in his hands, flicked it onto the projector, smooth as a soldier loading a machine gun.
“When I ain’t been drinkin’, I can’t do that so smooth,” he said. “Stay here with me, I show you how to run the machine. I could keel over anyday. Then your daddy would need someone to do this. Hell, I don’t even think he knows how. I just do what I was doin’ before he bought this here picture show. You know, used to be a fine house right back of here, all this was a big front lawn. Wasn’t no drive-in picture show and no highway either.”
“Yes, sir, I knew that.”
“Say you did?”
I told him about the pieces of the house up in the trees behind us.
“That was a fine house. Burned down with that little Stilwind gal in it.”
“Did you know the Stilwinds?”
“Well, me and them didn’t exactly attend the same parties. Know what I’m sayin’? But I knew who they were. Was always somethin’ odd about that house burnin’, that girl in there. There was all kind of talk, but most of it was just that. Talk.”
There were a couple of chairs inside the projection booth, and we took to them.
