A Fine Dark Line

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 Tarzan the Terrible. Nub lay at my feet, snoozing.

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.”

“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.

“What was odd about it?” I asked.

“Heard tell from Jukes—he’s called that ’cause he plays the blues in juke joints sometimes. He’s a cousin and the night janitor over to the police station, high school, and newspaper. He picks up bits and pieces of a story from all them places. White people don’t notice a colored much. Jukes said that little girl got burned up, cops found wire around her wrists and ankles.”

“Wire?”

“Someone tied her to the bed, boy.”

“You’re sure?”

“No, I ain’t sure. Jukes overheard that when he’s cleanin’. If’n there was somethin’ to it, no one ever did nothin’ about it, said anything about it, ’cause that come down on the Stilwinds, and ain’t nobody wantin’ to come down on rich folk.”

“They think a Stilwind tied her to the bed, set the house on fire with her in it?”

“With everyone in it. Only all the others got out. ’Cept that little girl. She burned up ’cause the fire started in her room and she couldn’t get out. Those are the facts accordin’ to Jukes. I don’t know he heard right or told it right. But, they say you could hear her screamin’ while the house burned down. Sounded like an old wounded panther. Her mama tried to go in there after her. Flames was too high. Folks held her back, or she’d have run right through that fire and been burned up herself.”

“If the police thought one of the Stilwinds did it, why didn’t they arrest them?”

“Don’t get ahead of the facts. Just maybe one of the Stilwinds could have done it. Had they arrested a Stilwind, police force would have changed overnight. Back then Stilwinds was even more powerful than they are now, ’cause town wasn’t so big and they was all the big money that was in it.”

“How come the Stilwinds didn’t stay on the hill after they moved up there? Why did they move away?”

“Place supposed to be haunted by the ghost of that little girl burned up. Say she followed them up there to that house. Didn’t rebuild here ’cause they didn’t want bad memories, so they built up there on the hill. What I think, is memories followed them up that hill, not ghosts. They didn’t get far enough away. Maybe they can’t get nowhere far enough. What ghost mostly is, son, is memories.”

“Which Stilwind do you think set the fire?”

Buster laughed. “Boy, you is somethin’. I done told you no one got any proof any of them set a fire . . . ’Course, guess it don’t hurt to play with ideas. You got to consider all the angles of a thing. Lots thought it was James, because he was younger and might have been playin’ with fire. But, hell, he was a teenage fella, so he wasn’t playin’ if he done it. And if it was him, why did he tie his sister up? Was he just mean? Jealous? Had a grudge against her? Who knows? Families is like windows with curtains. Some folks keep the curtains pulled back. Most open and close them from time to time, and some don’t ever pull them back and you don’t never get no look inside. So, ain’t none of us outsiders really know what goes on in a family.

“Let’s see. There was an older sister, but she moved off before all this happened. Ain’t nobody thinks the mother did it, ’cause she was so overcome with it all. Story was, when they moved up on the hill, she seen her daughter at night at the foot of her bed, burnin’, holdin’ out her arms for help. It was more than the old lady could take. She lost her mind to save herself.

“Then there’s the father. The old man, though he ain’t old as me. He moved out of the house when his wife went nuts, started livin’ in the hotel downtown. The Griffith Hotel.”

“Does the father still live in the hotel?”

“Reckon he does. You real snoopy ’bout these people, ain’t you?”

“Did you know about a girl named Margret?”

“Margret? Who you talkin’ about, boy?”

I told him about the box, the letters, the ghost, the whole cloth of it. Once I started, I couldn’t shut up. You’d have thought I was drunk too.

“I remember ’bout that girl. I just didn’t remember the name. Them two things happenin’ in one night was big news. Fire and murder. Margret, well, she the daughter of a woman liked to take in men, you know what I mean?”

Being a recent sophisticate, I did know what he meant.

“Yes, sir.”

“I know that little girl’s mama in more ways than one. Me and her did business. She’s still living in the same house. She popular with the colored crowd, her being lighter. Mostly white and Mexican, I think. It’s a sad thing, boy, when a dark man got to feel better by bein’ with a light woman. Some kind of misery in all that somewhere.”

“Was that why you were with her?”

“You too young to talk about that. But I will say I ain’t seen her in years. And as to why I was with her, it was because she was cheap. That’s the God’s awful truth. I always did prefer me a woman black as midnight. But more than that, I like a good deal. Always get the best deal you can on somethin’. Don’t just jump at the first offer on any business come along . . . Winnie Wood, that was her name. It just come back to me.”

“Then her daughter was Margret Wood?”

“I think she used the Wood name. You a regular little investigator, ain’t you, boy? That’s good. You might be a policeman, you grow up.”

“Never thought about it.”

“You investigatin’ on this, ain’t you?”

“I’m curious.”

“That’s what it takes to be a law. And the good part is when a problem all comes together, click, click, click, like a tumbler in a safe . . . I used to be a law.”

“Really? A Texas Ranger?”

“Not any colored Rangers, son. But I was law.

“My granddaddy was known as Deadwood Dick, like a number of men was. He claimed to be the real one, or so my daddy told me. Said he was the Deadwood Dick that was written about in the dime novels. You don’t know what a dime novel is, do you? They was a kind of book or magazine. Adventure stories about Western folks. Daddy was a tracker for the U.S. Army. He helped track Geronimo down. My father was part Indian himself, Seminole. But he wasn’t like me. He was black as old coaly and rode a big white horse with a black mane and tail. I remember that about him. He had him a white sombrero turned up in front and wore chaps and fine Mexican boots with spurs. He had a way about him. They said he’d been with not only colored and Indian women, but Mexican and whites. He was deadly and good with a gun. He took up with a young woman half Seminole and part African and Cajun, and she was my mother. So I got lots of Indian in me, well as colored and Cajun. I grew up under the trackin’ business, ended up living with my mother in Indian Territory—Oklahoma. My father went off on a track oncet and no one ever heard of him again. Figure Indians got him. My mother used to say Indians got him, all right. A squaw.

“I became a Seminole Lighthorse when I was sixteen. Later, I added Lighthorse to my name. Lighthorse is a Seminole lawman in the small nation that was part of the Five Civilized Tribes. You heard of that, ain’t you?”

“No, sir.”

“Indians. Creeks. Cherokees. Choctaws. Seminoles. Chickasaws. They all made up what the white people called the Five Civilized Tribes. They had their own laws and run the nations when it come to Indian matters. I liked the life, but it come to an end and I come to East Texas. Been here ever since. Ain’t nothin’ ever been as good as them days. Wasn’t nobody callin’ me nigger then. Least not to my face.”

“You say it.”

“What?”

“Nigger. You say it. So does Rosy Mae.”

“It’s kind of got to be a habit. But let me tell you so you’ll know, as my mama used to say. Coloreds don’t like that said by no white people. Understand? I don’t like it said by no colored if he says it mean-like.”

“Did the Lighthorse arrest people?”

“Arrested ’em. Executed them if’n they needed it.”

“Really?”

“That’s right. I knowed a fella named Bob Johnston. He was mostly Seminole. He had some white blood in him, but a drop of Indian made you Seminole. Lot of coloreds with a drop preferred to be Seminoles. They was treated better. Some coloreds just joined up with the Seminole and became members of the tribe. Didn’t have no drop of Indian blood in ’em.

“Anyway, Bob got in a tussle with a friend, another Seminole, and killed him in a drunk fight. He was sentenced to death by the tribal council. No one wanted to keep him in a jail, ’cause there wasn’t none, so they turned him loose, told him what day to be back for his execution. He showed up on that day, which wasn’t unusual. That was the way things were done with our people. They gave him a big lunch, laughed with him, gave him a smoke, a snort of whiskey, and if one had been available, they might have given him a woman. After he ate, they pinned a white paper heart on his chest where they felt it beatin’, and he stretched out on the ground on a blanket, and me and another colored-mix fella was given the job to shoot him.

“One man covered Bob’s nose and mouth so he couldn’t breathe good, and Bob didn’t fight a lick. Me and this other fella, Cumsey was his name, leaned over and shot him right through that paper heart with our rifles. I remember I had an old Henry rifle, and with him lyin’ down there on the ground and me with that rifle barrel just an inch from his chest, I was still afraid I’d miss, I was shakin’ so much.

“I liked Bob. He was a good fella. Like me, he loved his drink too much and it got him in trouble. Hell, I been in some trouble and ain’t no one ever shot me for it. I think about that now and then. Think about old Bob lyin’ there, his breath cut off, and me and Cumsey shootin’ him through the chest.”

“I wouldn’t have come back if they had let me go,” I said.

“But Bob did. He had his honor. Honor was important then . . . What’s your name?”

“Stanley.”

“You mind I just call you Stan?”

“No.”

“A man gave his word, he stuck by it, even if it was gonna mean his death. Least it was that way amongst the Seminoles. I can’t say I’ve been able to live up to that good as old Bob. Hell, I think I agree with you. I’d have run off.”

“How could you shoot him if you liked him?”

“Bob broke the law. Law laid down the law, and it laid it down on him. It was my job to uphold tribal law, and I did. I can’t say as I felt all that good about it, but he did murder a man, and there wasn’t no reason on it ’cept too much firewater . . . They’re startin’ to file in now.”

I saw cars moving in through the soft darkness, parking next to speakers, turning off their lights.

“How’s about I show you some more about this here projector?” he said.