A Fine Dark Line

8

THAT NIGHT, lying in bed, I dreamed I smelled smoke. The feeling was so intense, I tried to awake, see if a fire had started in my room.

But there was another feeling that was more frightening than the smoke. It was again that sensation of someone in the room. It was stronger this time than it had ever been, and it took every ounce of courage and energy for me to open my eyes.

When I sat up in my bed, the stench of smoke went away immediately. Still, I had the uncomfortable impression of someone moving in the shadows. I fumbled for the lamp beside my bed, turned it on, was greeted with nothing.

An empty room.

I tried to remember what Buster had told me about thinking something was one thing, but not letting yourself decide it was until I knew for certain.

But in the night, that didn’t seem to be a line of thinking that was helping much.

I noted the closet door was slightly open.

I had pulled a fresh pillow from there before bedtime. Had I failed to close it completely?

I sat up in bed for a long time, then slowly eased the covers off, took hold of my crutches, made my way to the closet, fearing any moment the door would swing open to reveal . . .

I was uncertain.

I took hold of the doorknob, started to pull it wider, decided I was being silly. I pushed it shut. Inside, I heard a kind of shuffling. Perhaps some of my junk shifting.

Or something lying down.

Goose bumps roamed over every inch of my skin. I crutched back to bed, feeling a coldness at my back in a room that was anything but cold. The fan in the window was beating the hot air about, and the water-cooled straw at its back was making things more muggy than comfortable, but in that moment, I was cold as a body on a cooling board. I climbed back in bed, sat against the headboard, pulled the covers up to my neck, stared at the closet door. I didn’t turn out the light.

I decided then and there something must have followed me home from the house on the hill and was roaming the shadows of my room as well as hiding in my closet, maybe under the bed.

Something not of this world.

In time, however, sleep was stronger than fear, and I fell asleep with the light on, slept late into the morning.

In the sober light of day, I finally had the courage to look in the closet.

Nub came out wagging his tail. I felt like an idiot. And I thought of Buster’s wisdom, and never forgot it. To this day, I’m a skeptic.

———

NEXT DAY, a hot morning, nearly noon, I looked out through the crack between water fan and window frame, saw a large black man standing out by the highway, looking at our drive-in.

I had never seen him before. I eased up to the crack, got down on my knees, and looked out. He was big and tall and wore a wide-brimmed hat, work shirt, and overalls. He just stood there looking, smoking a cigarette. Perhaps he was taking in the mural, the cavalry and the Indians.

After a while, he tossed the butt of his cigarette and walked away. I didn’t think much of it at the time.

———

DOWNSTAIRS, Rosy greeted me, waddled about the living room, slapping about with a duster. I went to the kitchen, poured myself a glass of milk.

Through the sliding glass door I saw Buster out back. He was carrying a paint can and brush. It was hours before he was supposed to be at work and it surprised me to see him.

As I went out, Nub eyeballed me like he might get up, but this time he held his place on the cool tile floor of the kitchen. Even a loyal dog needed a break now and then.

I made my way to the projection booth, tried to strike up a conversation, but he wasn’t having any. It was as if a dark cloud full of thunder and lightning had fallen over him. He was in no mood to talk, and said so.

“This ain’t my birthday, little boy, and I ain’t been drinkin’. I got work to do. No offense, but I really don’t want company.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, just leave me alone.”

I crutched back to the drive-in, went inside, and sat down at the table. Rosy Mae came over, said, “He hurt your feelin’s, that old man did, didn’t he?”

“No.”

“Yes he did. I can tell way yo’ face is hangin’. Don’t pay that old buzzard no mind no how. He jes’ a messed-up old man. He happy one day, mad the next.”

“He was nice yesterday.”

Rosy Mae sat down at the table. “Mr. Stanley . . . Stanley, he like that. Just as moody as an old milk cow, only worse. He thinks he’s a high-falutin nigger. Heard tell he supposed to been some kind’a law in the Indi’n nations. Supposed to be part Indi’n or somethin’.”

“He told me that.”

“I don’t even know it true. He could just be one of them red niggers from over Louisiana. He drinks, one time it make him friendly, next time it make him like a poison snake you done shook up and let go.”

“He’s not drinking today.”

“Maybe it’s when he’s not drinking he is who he is. Or maybe it’s the want of a drink that makes him like that. That’s how them drinkers are, and it ain’t never they fault if’n they tell it. Hear them say: ‘Don’t never trust no person don’t drink,’ and that’s the silliest thing ever did hear. You better off not to trust them drinkers, ’cause drink is for the miserable. ’Course, that the truth, I ought to be swiggin’ me a gallon jug.”

“Thanks, Rosy. I feel better.”

“Good. Yo’ mama and daddy done went to town with Callie to buy her some school clothes. They say they gonna take you tomorrow. I’m gonna read me some of my magazines, you don’t tell.”

“You know I won’t.”

“All right then. I read the same ones over and over ’cause I ain’t been nowhere to buy none. I got some words I run acrost though, and I don’t know ’em. Marked them so you could help me.”

“Let me see them.”

She pulled a couple from her big bag of a purse, put them on the table, carefully opened them to dog-eared pages. She showed me the words that she had underlined with a pencil. They were words I knew. I told her how to say them and what they meant.

She darted to the living room, kicked off her shoes, lay on the couch, and began to read. Nub climbed up next to her feet, pressed himself to her. She wiggled her toes in his fur.

I looked out at the projection booth. Buster was painting it a fresh green color. It occurred to me he might be the one who painted the fence in the first place. If so, I wondered if he had been the artist who made the paintings of the aliens and such.

I watched him work. Unlike Rosy Mae, he seemed packed with endless energy and in need of a way to burn it off. I wanted to ask him about the paintings on the fence, but didn’t dare. Not after the way he acted.

I crutched upstairs, got my Tarzan book, went outside, and sat on the long porch that faced the drive-in lot. Pretty soon I was lost in Tarzan’s world.

I was near the end of the book when a shadow fell over me. I looked up. It was Buster.

“Stan, think you could get that ole fat gal to get me some lemonade or somethin’?”

“I heard that,” Rosy Mae called from the living room. She had the windows up to let in what wind there was, and the screens certainly didn’t block voices.

“I don’t care you heard it,” Buster said. “I care I get some lemonade or somethin’.”

Rosy Mae appeared at the screen door. “I ain’t got no lemonade, nigger.”

“Whatcha got that I’d want?”

“I got some ice tea, but you ain’t gonna come in the house. Mr. Big Stanley wouldn’t like that.”

“Maybe there’s other things you got I’d want. And they ain’t any of Mr. Big Stanley’s business.”

“Well, you only gonna get ice tea.”

Rosy Mae disappeared into the kitchen. She came back with a large fruit jar full of ice cubes and ice tea.

“This is what you drink out of,” she said. “I don’t want your lips on none of Miss Gal’s dishes.”

Buster took the tea, drank a long draught of it. “Ain’t nothin’ like ice tea for coolin’ you, next to good spring or sweet well water that is. I do like good sweet water. You got any cookies, woman?”

“What makes you think I got cookies I’m gonna give you any?”

“You look like a gal wouldn’t want a man to do without. Something sweet and dark . . . like this tea. Maybe somethin’ sweeter . . . Like a cookie.”

“Like a cookie?”

“You hear me.”

Rosy Mae, still behind the screen, grinned. “It gonna be a cookie, on that you can be certain.”

She went away, came back with a fistful of chocolate chips she had baked the day before. “Now you go on back to work, nigger.”

Buster took the cookies, sat in the chair next to me, eating them, drinking the tea. He said, “Let me tell you somethin’, boy. I kinda got my ways, and they ain’t that good. But I want you to know, I don’t mean nothin’ by ’em.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m what you call one moody nigger.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t much care someone gets mad at me, but I don’t want to hurt no one I didn’t mean to, and that’s all I’m gonna say on the matter.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You want to talk now, I’ll talk. I done painted most of my buildin’.”

“No, sir. I don’t believe I have anything to say.”

“Suit yourself.”

He drank his tea, crunched his cookies. We sat in the shade of the veranda and watched heat waves run across the drive-in lot.

Finally, I said, “Did you do the artwork on the fence? The space creatures?”

“I did. I oncet met a man told me he seen one of them flyin’ saucers.”

He crunched another cookie.

“Really?”

“Said he seen a little man too. It was in a place called Aurora, Texas. About 1894. He and some other cowboys seen a big flyin’ thing crash. Now’days they call it a flyin’ saucer. He said he saw this little man that was knocked out of it. Told me this when I was workin’ on the 101 Ranch.”

“Didn’t Tom Mix work on that ranch?”

“How you know about an old movie cowboy like that?”

“My dad.”

“He told you about him?”

“Yes, sir. Did you know Tom Mix?”

“No. I seen him oncet or twicet, but I didn’t really know him. I liked that ranch. They pretty well treated a man same as any other if he could do his job. As for Tom Mix, he was a real cowboy, but one impressed me was Bill Pickett, and I did know him right well.”

I looked blank.

“He was a colored man. Invented bull-doggin’, like you see in the rodeo. But Bill done it with his teeth. He’d leap off a horse onto a bull, bite its lip, take it to the ground. Some folks called him the Dusky Demon.”

It occurred to me we had lost sight of what Buster had originally started our conversation with.

“What about the flying saucer?”

“Well, this fella told me this little body he seen was buried in the graveyard there in Aurora. He described it to me, and I painted it on the fence there like he told it. But the green color, well, I did that ’cause later folks started callin’ them little green men. Fella said he seen the critter, told me it was actually kinda gray-lookin’.”

“You believe that man’s story?”

“Naw, but it’s a good story, ain’t it?”

“How come you didn’t paint more things on the fence?”

“Got tired and shy of paint. Just had the green stuff left.”

“Do you paint at home?”

“Just the shack I live in. Painted it last week.”

“You have a family?”

“Had a wife. Way back in the nations. Indian gal. Pretty thing, if a little stout. She come down with smallpox and died. I had another. A colored girl named Talley. We had a daughter. Talley run off with a lighter-skin nigger and took my daughter, Helen, with her. I gave up on marriage after that.”

“Your wife and daughter live here?”

“Mineola. Helen’s got her a husband and family. Man she’s married to treats her good. Works some kind of way for the railroad.”

“You know a lot about her.”

“I check on her. My grandbabies, they eight and four and two. All boys. I ain’t never seen them but from a distance.”

“Maybe you should introduce yourself.”

“Helen be proud to meet me. She thinks I knocked up her mother and run off, but it was her mother who left, not me. But she ain’t gonna believe that . . . Well, it ain’t gettin’ no earlier or any cooler, so I ought to see I can finish up.”

———

INSIDE THE HOUSE, I sat at the table, holding my book, but not reading it. I decided to fix myself some tea, but no sooner had I got my crutches under me, started for the refrigerator, than Rosy Mae was on her feet. Her magazines went into her bag faster than a frightened armadillo darting into a hole.

“What you want, little Stanley? Some tea? Let me get that for ya.”

“You don’t need to do that,” I said.

“I know,” she said, and winked. “But I hear yo daddy’s car out there.”

I grinned, sat at the table. She poured me ice tea, put the remaining cookies in front of me on a bright yellow plate.

“You won’t tell I gave that nigger cookies and tea, will you?”

“I don’t care.”

“I ain’t sure yo daddy would like it.”

“I won’t tell.”

True to Rosy Mae’s sharp hearing, I heard the door open, and Callie, Mom, and Daddy burst inside laughing. They had a number of sacks. They brought them into the living room, put them on the couch.

Mom, carrying a small brown bag with grease stains, greeted us, came into the kitchen, Callie and Daddy following. Mom said, “You won’t believe the sale we got down at K-Woolens. We bought all kinds of things for school. I got you some things too. I know you don’t like to shop, so I got you some jeans and shirts. We can go tomorrow and fit some shoes. I want you to get some tennies and some nice dress shoes. We might as well get you a winter coat too. They’re on sale.”

“We bought me a coat,” Callie said, “but it’s so hard to want to buy one, hot as it is right now. I did find a pretty one, flares at the bottom—I’ll try it on for you later, and I got the cutest clothes. And Mom found some for herself. She made Daddy buy some nice pants, a shirt, and some shoes, and we went to lunch at the drugstore cafe.”

Daddy grinned. He had that beleaguered look of a man who had shopped well beyond his wants. Which was pretty much like my wants. Little to none.

Glancing at the Tarzan book, Daddy said, “Monkeys carry Tarzan off in this one?”

“No, sir. This one’s got dinosaurs in it.”

“Dinosaurs? Guess I haven’t got a clue what Tarzan’s about.”

“I brought you home somethin’, dear,” Mom said. “A nice hamburger and some fries from the cafe. There’s one in there for you too, Rosy Mae.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Mom put the greasy sack on the table in front of me. I opened it, got out the hamburger and fries, put them on the plate next to my cookies. I pushed the sack over to Rosy Mae, who without hesitation sat at the table and began to eat.

Mom said to me, “You eat the hamburger before you have anymore cookies, you hear, dear.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Rosy Mae said, “You know, my cousin Ju William cooks there at the drugstore cafe.”

“Well, it must run in the family,” Callie said. “Our lunch was so good.”

Daddy looked out the screen door, saw Buster painting the projection booth. “What in the hell is Buster doing here this time of day? I don’t pay him overtime.”

Daddy looked at me.

“He was here when I got up.”

“Well, he better not expect more money, ’cause I don’t have it . . . Though that old booth does need painting . . . I don’t know. Maybe I can work something out with him. Least I won’t have to paint it myself out in this horrid, hot sun. But good God, that green. I’d have bought him a better color paint. Blue maybe.”

Daddy went out the screen door, walked toward the projection booth. He seemed to be pushing heat waves before him.

Buster looked up at Daddy, stopped painting, laid the paintbrush down gently on the edge of the paint can.

Daddy met him without shaking hands. I could hear Daddy talking, but couldn’t understand him. Buster nodded as Daddy talked, and I thought, the man Daddy’s talking to talked to Daddy’s childhood hero, Tom Mix. I wondered what Daddy would think about that.

When Rosy Mae finished her hamburger, which didn’t take long, Mom and her went into the living room and Mom showed her what they had bought.

Rosy Mae shrieked, said, “Oh, this so pretty, Miss Gal.”

It was a big dress about the size of a campaign tent, and it was all the colors of the rainbow. It was called a muumuu, and Mom had gotten it for Rosy Mae.

“I thought this would be a nice surprise,” Mom said. “A colorful house dress.”

“Well, it’s certainly colorful. Thank you, Miss Gal. You so sweet.”

“You’re more than welcome, Rosy Mae.”

While this was going on, Callie came over and whispered in my ear. “Let’s talk.”