The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers [57]
‘Just wait a minute. Just let me find brain room so I can study it all out and tell it to you plain.’ He crushed some sheets of newspaper lying on the hearth and picked up a few sticks of kindling.
‘Let me make the fire,’ Portia said. ‘You just sit down at the table, and soon as this here stove is hot us going to have a cup of coffee. Then maybe it all won’t seem so bad.’
‘There is not any coffee. I used the last of it yesterday.’
When he said this Portia began to cry. Savagely she stuffed paper and wood into the stove and lighted it with a trembling hand. ‘This here the way it is,’ she said. ‘Willie and Highboy were messing around tonight at a place where they got no business being. You know how I feels like I always got to keep my Willie and my Highboy close to me? Well, if I’d been there none of this trouble would of come about. But I were at the Ladies’ Meeting at the church and them boys got restless.
They went down to Madame Reba’s Palace of Sweet Pleasure.
And Father, this is sure one bad, wicked place. They got a man sells tickets on the bug--but they also got these strutting, bad-blood, tail-shaking nigger gals and these here red satin curtains and--’
‘Daughter,’ said Doctor Copeland irritably. He pressed his hands to the side of his head. ‘I know the place. Get to the point.’
‘Love Jones were there--and she is one bad colored gal.
Willie he drunk liquor and shimmied around with her until first thing you know he were in a fight. He were in a fight with this boy named Junebug--over Love. And for a while they fights there with their hands and then this Junebug got out his knife. Our Willie didn’t have no knife, so he commenced to bellow and run around the parlor. Then finally Highboy found Willie a razor and he backed up and nearbout cut this Junebug’s head off.’
Doctor Copeland drew his shawl closer around him. ‘Is he dead?’
‘That boy too mean to die. He in the hospital, but he going to be out and making trouble again before long.’
‘And William?’
‘The police come in and taken him to the jail in the Black Maria. He still locked up.’
‘And he did not get hurt?’
‘Oh, he got a busted eye and a little chunk cut out his behind.
But it won’t bother him none. What I can’t understand is how come he would be messing around with that Love. She at least ten shades blacker than I is and she the ugliest nigger I ever seen. She walk like she have a egg between her legs and don’t want to break it. She ain’t even clean. And here Willie done cut the buck like this over her.’
Doctor Copeland leaned closer to the stove and groaned. He coughed and his face stiffened. He held his paper handkerchief to his mouth and it became spotted with blood.
The dark skin of his face took on a greenish pallor.
‘Course Highboy come and tell me soon as it all happened. Understand, my Highboy didn’t have nothing to do with these here bad gals. He were just keeping Willie company. He so grieved about Willie he been sitting out on the street curb in front of the jail ever since.’ The fire-colored tears rolled down Portia’s face. ‘You know how us three has always been. Us haves our own plan and nothing ever went wrong with it before. Even money hasn’t bothered us none. Highboy he pay the rent and I buys the food--and Willie he takes care of Saturday Night. Us has always been like three-piece twinses.’
At last it was morning. The mill whistles blew for the first shift. The sun came out and brightened the clean saucepans hanging on the wall above the stove. They sat for a long time.
Portia pulled at the rings on her ears until her lobes were irritated and purplish red. Doctor Copeland still held his head in his hands.