them Dixie ducks is buried, does it?”
“No, sir.”
“We don’t keep it up. You know why?”
“No, sir.”
“ ’Cause come Halloween, white boys come in and push the stones over and break ’em. We better off not doin’ nothin’. Fixin’ a stone, cuttin’ down that grass, just attracts them fools. Ain’t nothin’ funnier or braver to them boys than pushin’ over some colored’s stone, or throwin’ it in the creek, breakin’ it up. They’re cowards too, boy. Tell you why. They know ain’t no colored gonna do anything to them out in the open, ’cause then you got the Kluxers, or some of their types. That ain’t brave, now is it?”
“No, sir. I guess not.”
“It ain’t. That’s what I’m tellin’ you. Listen to me. I’m learnin’ you somethin’ here.”
Along the street white faces began to disappear, replaced by colored faces. The cars at the curbs and up next to houses were for the most part older, the houses along the way less nice, some of them smaller than our living room back at the drive-in. They peeled paint, flapped porch boards, begged for shingles and window glass, leaned as if in desperate need of rest. There were outhouses out back of homes, no electric lines leading into most.
Sitting on porch steps, or porches, some settled in stuffed chairs from which the insides exploded in puffs of cotton like drooping nuclear clouds, were men, young and old. They wore their worn-out clothes with slouch hats like uniforms. Their faces looked as if they had survived a beating and expected another.
As we walked by one of the men called out.
“Did he follow you home, Buster?”
“He did,” Buster said.
“You gonna keep ’im?”
“Ain’t got no wife says I can’t.”
“I hear them little white boys is hard to train.”
“Naw,” Buster said. “Not if you whip ’em good with a sound piece of fishin’ cane and put down newspapers.”
“Whatcha gonna feed that boy?”
“Got it here in this cardboard box. Guts from the slaughterhouse. A hog’s head.”
“Hell, I want that hog’s head,” said one of the men. “Why don’t you kill him, Buster, let me have that bicycle?”
“Your fat ass would flatten that bicycle,” Buster said.
Laughter rose up, drifted away as we moved on.
I was, to put it mildly, becoming a bit nervous. What was I doing in the Section anyway? Had I lost my mind?
———
WE TOOK A SIDE STREET, passed some kids playing. One of them was a small boy with a snotty nose that had collected dust and made dirt roads from his nostrils to his lips. As we passed, he looked at us as if he might ask us for identification.
Alongside the railroad track we came to a small house the sick green color of our drive-in fence.
I pointed this out to Buster. He said, “It ought to look the same color. I took me some of the paint. It ain’t pretty, but it keeps it from peelin’ and it looks better than gray.”
There was a large stone step that led up to the porch. The house was simple but looked clean and cared for. The screen in front of the door was a new one and the windows were clean with shutters drawn back. There was a metal lawn chair on the porch. It too was painted the same ugly green.
Behind the house, above all this, between railway and structure, rose an old billboard that had probably not been changed since World War II. It was a happy white woman holding a Coke, a smile as bright and wide as an idiot’s hopes.
At the corner of her smile was a rip. The wind and rain had caught the rip, torn it back a piece. Crows gathered atop the billboard, and just above the woman’s head they had done what they had done to Robert E. Lee.
The crows looked down on us as if we might be something to eat. I leaned my bicycle against the porch. Buster took out a key, pulled back the screen, unlocked the door.
“Welcome to nigger heaven,” he said.
Inside, the place was dark and smelled like stale paper. As Buster turned on the one weak overhead light, it became evident the smell was due to much of the walls being covered in shelves filled with books and magazines.
There was a closet and a little table near the wall that held a hot plate, dishes, and eating utensils. In the middle of the room was a large plank table with chairs. Against one wall, next to a bookshelf, was a narrow bed. Off center of the room was a heating stove made from an oil drum. A crooked pipe ran from it, exited through the ceiling. There was a pile of split wood lying beside it, ready for winter.
I said, “You read all these books?”
“What kind of question is that, boy? ’Course. Do you read?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You got this many books?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, you get you a collection of books. Read them, or at least try to read them. I’d offer you some cake but I don’t have any.”
“That’s all right.”
“I got coffee.”
“I don’t drink coffee much.”
“Me neither. Except every morning, during the day, and in the afternoon. I think I got a warm RC though, you want it.”
“Sure. Thanks.”
Buster put the box on the plank table, gave me the RC, started coffee. He sat at the table, removed a number of folded newspapers and clippings from the box.
“Sit down, boy. Grab a chair.”
I did, said, “What is this?”
“I told you Jukes was the janitor at the newspaper. Also the janitor at the police station and the high school. Just does the police station on the weekends. At the high school, he don’t have to do anything in the summer. When school starts up, he’s got a crew works for him. Old Jukes does all right.”
“How do these clippings help us?”
“You aren’t thinkin’, boy . . . And quit lookin’ out that back window. That girl on the billboard there, you ain’t gonna see no titties fall out or nothin’. She’s just paper.”
I blushed. Buster said, “Now don’t get upset or mad. I’m just kiddin’ with you. A man’s got to learn to joke and he’s got to learn to laugh at his own self and know it’s okay to think about titties. You don’t do that, you ain’t gonna be worth the powder it would take to blow your ass up. Thinkin’ on titties too much is preoccupation, not thinkin’ on them is sign of some kind of anemia. You listenin’?”
“Yes, sir.”
“One of the things you better learn to laugh at is the women you can’t have, ’cause they’re gonna be plenty. Now, think. Why would we want clippin’s that go back all these years?”
“I guess to read about the murder.”
“All right. Now you’re startin’ to fan the fire. But we got clippin’s here before that murder, and after it. Why is that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Things like this, sometimes they just happen. Man does the murder don’t even know why he does it. When I was in Oklahoma, time I was tellin’ you about, there was an Indian went off one morning and beat his wife to death with a stick of stove wood and set fire to the house, burned up their baby girl in her crib. He went out then and shot their dog and shot himself in the head. He wasn’t as good a shot when it come to shootin’ himself. He lived, but
