'I ain't wondering anything! Honest!'
'I'll bet you're wondering why I let your boss sit in that chair of his own accord, rather than tie him down to make sure he doesn't move.'
'It ain't none of my affair, sir,' Jeff Calder said.
'Are you telling me you don't want to know?'
'No, no, I'd be glad to know. I just meant… well, you know… I ain't one to poke my nose into other people's business.'
'Well, since you're so eager to learn, I'll tell you. I spent some time in an institution for wayward boys, where there was this warden. And every time this warden he talked to me, he used a tone of voice-just like our pimp over there. When a kid acted up, this warden would have him brought to his office and tied into a chair that faced the corner, like a dunce stool in school-Hey, pour out another round here, Peggy! And have one yourself! Hell, it's on the house! This warden, he earned my respect, because he knew how to punish. He really knew how to punish. I found that out when the guards caught me being high-spirited like any normal American boy, and they brought me into the warden's office. He smiled at me and waved his hand toward the chair. I sidled over and sat down, smiling and sassy, the way a kid has to be to show the world he can take anything they can dish out. The guards came over to tie me into the chair, but the warden said no. 'No, don't tie young Master Lieder. I'm going to trust him to sit right there until nightfall of his own free will. There'll be no ropes to bind him. But to bolster Master Lieder's willpower, I'll give it a little support. If he says one word, or moves so much as a hair, I shall chastise him. Oh, and there's one other thing. Master Lieder. There won't be any going to the toilet. ' And he went back to doing his desk work while the guards sat by the door, grinning because they'd seen this punishment before. So I sat there facing the corner. And the time went by. And I could hear the scratch of the warden's pen on paper. But before long I had to piss something fierce. That was when it dawned on me that the real punishment wasn't being made to sit in the corner. It was being made to piss yourself, like a little baby, with guards looking on and snickering. Now pissing yourself because you're tied to a chair and can't do anything else is bad enough, but to piss yourself when you aren't bound by anything other than the warden's warning not to move… that's humiliating. Well, finally I couldn't stand it no longer, so I whipped it out and started to piss on the wall. And the guards grabbed me and pinned me against the wall with my pecker still hanging out, and this warden came over to me with a ruler in his hand, shaking his head sadly and saying, hadn't he asked Master Lieder nicely to sit in that chair and not move a muscle? And hadn't he been kind enough not to tie Master Lieder to the chair? And look how Master Lieder had disappointed him. And he brought that ruler down on the head of my pecker! Hard! Five times! He counted them out! And his face was all puffed up and purple with rage, and with a kind of… joy! After a while, he got control of himself and calmed down. He told me to tidy up my clothing, and not just stand there revealing myself like that. He had the guards put me back in the chair, and he told me that if I moved again from that chair, it would be ten strokes with the ruler, and I'd have to count them out. I sat there. And do you wonder if my pecker hurt? It hurt! All the way up to my belly, it hurt. But the funny thing was, I didn't have to piss anymore. That warden had scared the piss out of me. Scared the piss right out of me!' And Lieder roared with laughter.
Tiny laughed so hard he had to slap the bar until his palm stung to stop, and Jeff Calder laughed along, shaking his head and wiping his eyes with his knuckle as he forced out a string of breathy, high-pitched he-he- he's.
When Lieder's laughter subsided, he turned to Mr. Delanny, mirth still damp in his eyes, and said, 'I don't intend to take a ruler to you, Mr. Pimp, because that's a degrading thing to do to a person. If you disobey me by talking or getting up from that chair, I'll just… shoot you. You see, I have chosen you to be my Example Nigger, so the town will know what a dangerous and stupid thing it would be to cross me. You probably wonder why I have selected you for this honor. Well, fact is I'm not exactly sure. I think it's the way you talked to me. I really hate people to use a tone of voice on me.'
Mr. Delanny looked up, heavy lidded, from the solitaire he had begun defiantly to lay out, then he returned his attention to his cards. His glance had been intentionally slow and indifferent, and his hands were steady, but Frenchy was uneasy, because he failed to put the red nine on the black ten, and Delanny never missed a play.
His amused eyes never leaving Mr. Delanny, Lieder asked Jeff Calder, 'What's your boss's name?'
'Mr. Delanny, sir.'
'Delanny, eh? I like to know a man's name. Gives you something to hang your hate on. Doesn't it bother you, Peggy, to work for a slimy pimp who talks to weary travelers in a tone of voice?'
Jeff Calder showed his teeth in an uncertain attempt at a smile.
'Yes, Mr. Delanny acts all refined and superior. But he won't be refined and superior for long, because sooner or later the need to piss will rise within him, as it must for all men born of woman. And that's when we'll find out what Mr. Delanny is made of. Either he will just sit there and piss his pants like a little baby, in which case he won't seem nearly so refined and superior. Or he will try to get up from that chair to relieve himself, in which case he will be dead, because I've promised to shoot him if he moves, and I'm a man of my word. It'll be interesting to see which path he chooses, don't you think?'
As Jeff Calder swallowed, the sound of a door slamming upstairs was followed by a slurred snarl from Queeny, as she and Chinky were herded down the stairs by Bobby-My-Boy, the Chinese girl wearing only a camisole and her everyday cotton knee-length culottes, Queeny in a frayed old wrap, her orange, gray-rooted hair a tangled nest over her sleep-puffed eyes. They had been sleeping late after yesterday's work.
'You took your own sweet time rounding these holes up!' Lieder accused. Then in a 'naughty, naughty!' tone, he said, 'Bobby-My-Boy? Have you been sampling the merchandise? Fess up, now!'
Tiny laughed and slapped the bar, and Jeff Calder snickered, while Bobby-My-Boy protested petulantly that he hadn't done nothing!
'Well, just so's you don't try to get a head start on your friends.' Lieder turned to Jeff Calder. 'You got any sarsaparilla back there, Peggy?'
'No, sir. There's a couple old bottles of birch beer, but I don't know if they're still good. They been around a spell.'
'Pour me out one and we'll test 'er. You see, I don't drink anything hard, 'cause I don't need drink to get my blood churning. It's always churning.'
Calder wiped the dust off one of the bottles, snapped up its wire-clamp seal, and poured some into a glass.
Lieder sipped cautiously, then pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes like a connoisseur. 'Well now, that ain't half-bad. I'm more partial to sarsaparilla, but this'll do.' Then with one of those sudden shifts of topic designed to keep the other person off balance, he said, 'So tell me, old timer. Where did you leave your leg?'
'Ah… I lost it in the Battle of the Wilderness,' Jeff Calder said.
'Ah! A veteran of the South's struggle for its constitutional right to self-de-ter-min-ation!' His voice swung from syllable to syllable in the manner of a tent revivalist. 'The bankers and mill-owners of the North told the stupid Yankee cannon fodder they were fighting to free the slaves. Free the slaves, my butt! The owners of those cotton mills didn't give a shit for slaves, neither black field slaves nor white wage slaves! They just wanted to keep the South from deciding its own destiny. Free the slaves to do what? To wander the countryside hungry and out of work? To swagger drunk down the street, pushing white women into the gutter? Did they free black women so they could end up in low-class whorehouses-like Miss Slashy-face yonder-selling their ass to all comers? Free the slaves!'
Jeff Calder saw no reason to mention that he had fought in blue, or that he had left the army informally on the eve of the great battle, slipping into an empty boxcar of a departing supply train. It was an accident in the switching yard that had cost him his leg.
'What do they call you, bartender?'
'Name's Jeff Calder…. Sir.'
'Well, Mr. Calder, fill those glasses to the brim! And don't forget the ladies. We want them in a generous and frolicsome mood for their night's labors. Drink up, ladies and gentlemen! Let our rejoicing be unbounded!' But when the rye bottle approached his glass, he put his hand over it and scowled, and Calder quickly refilled it with birch beer.
For several minutes Frenchy had been concentrating on Mr. Delanny with all her might, trying to project from her mind to his the image of the over-and-under derringer he kept in his boot. She knew he couldn't take out three men with a two-shot derringer, but at least he could act like a man and-! Delanny looked up from his cards, having
