Devil in a Blue Dress

Chapter 5

I found a chair next to my friend Odell Jones.

Odell was a quiet man and a religious man. His head was the color and shape of a red pecan. And even though he was a God-fearing man he’d find his way down to John’s about three or four times a week. He’d sit there until midnight nursing a bottle of beer, not saying a word unless somebody spoke to him.

Odell was soaking up all the excitement so he could carry it around with him on his job as a janitor at the Pleasant Street school. Odell always wore an old gray tweed jacket and threadbare brown woolen pants.

“Hey, Odell,” I greeted him.

“Easy.”

“How’s it going tonight?”

“Well,” he said slowly, thinking it over. “It’s goin’ alright. It sure is goin’.”

I laughed and slapped Odell on the shoulder. He was so slight that the force pushed him to the side but he just smiled and sat back up. Odell was older than most of my friends by twenty years or more; I think he was almost fifty then. To this day he’s outlived two wives and three out of four children.

“What’s it look like tonight, Odell?”

“ ’Bout two hours ago,” he said while he scratched his left ear, “Fat Wilma Johnson come in with Toupelo and danced up a storm. She jump up in the air and come down so hard this whole room like t’shook.”

“That Wilma like to dance,” I said.

“Don’t know how she keep that much heft, hard as she work and hard as she play.”

“She probably eat hard too.”

That tickled Odell.

I asked him to hold a seat for me while I went around saying hello.

I made the rounds shaking hands and asking people if they had seen a white girl, Delia or Dahlia or something. I didn’t use her real name because I didn’t want anybody to connect me with her if Mr. Albright turned out to be wrong and there was trouble. But no one had seen her. I would have even asked Frank Green but he was gone by the time I worked my way to the bar.

When I got back to my table Odell was still there and smiling.

“Hilda Redd come in,” he said to me.

“Yeah?”

“Lloyd try to make a little time an’ she hit him in that fat gut so hard he a’most went down.” Odell acted out Lloyd’s part, puffing his cheeks and bulging his eyes.

We were still laughing when I heard a shout that was so loud even Lips looked up from his horn.

“Easy!”

Odell looked up.

“Easy Rawlins, is that you?”

A big man walked into the room. A big man in a white suit with blue pinstripes and a ten-gallon hat. A big black man with a wide white grin who moved across the crowded room like a cloudburst, raining hellos and howyadoin’s on the people he passed as he waded to our little table.

“Easy!” he laughed. “You ain’t jumped outta no windahs yet?”

“Not yet, Dupree.”

“You know Coretta, right?”

I noticed her there behind Dupree; he had her in tow like a child’s toy wagon.

“Hi, Easy,” she said in a soft voice.

“Hey, Coretta, how are ya?”

“Fine,” she said quietly. She spoke so softly that I was surprised I understood her over the music and the noise. Maybe I really didn’t hear her at all but just understood what she meant by the way she looked at me and the way she smiled.

Dupree and Coretta were as different as any two people could be. He was muscular and had an inch or two on me, maybe six-two, and he was loud and friendly as a big dog. Dupree was a smart man as far as books and numbers went but he was always broke because he’d squander his money on liquor and women, and if there was any left over you could talk him out of it with any hard-luck story.

But Coretta was something else altogether. She was short and round with cherry-brown skin and big freckles. She always wore dresses that accented her bosom. Coretta was sloe-eyed. Her gaze moved from one part of the room to another almost aimlessly, but you still had the feeling that she was watching you. She was a vain man’s dream.

“Miss ya down at the plant, Ease,” Dupree said. “Yeah, it just ain’t the same wit’out you down there t’keep me straight. Them other niggahs just cain’t keep up.”

“I guess you have to do without me from now on, Dupree.”

“Uh-uh, no. I cain’t live with that. Benny wants you back, Easy. He’s sorry he let you go.”

“First I heard of it.”

“You know them I-talians, Ease, they cain’t say they sorry ’cause it’s a shame to’em. But he wants you back though, I know that.”

“Could we sit down with you and Odell, Easy?” Coretta said sweetly.

“Sure, sure. Get her a chair, Dupree. Com’on pull up here between us, Coretta.”

I called the bartender to send over a quart of bourbon and a pail of chipped ice.

“So he wants me back, huh?” I asked Dupree once we all had a glass.

“Yeah! He told me this very day that if you walked in that door he’d take you back in a minute.”

“First he want me to kiss his be-hind,” I said. I noticed that Coretta’s glass was already empty. “You want me to freshen that, Coretta?”

“Maybe I’ll have another li’l taste, if you wanna pour.” I could feel her smile all the way down my spine.

Dupree said, “Shoot, Easy, I told him that you was sorry ’bout what happened an’ he’s willin’ t’let it pass.”

“I’m a sorry man alright. Any man without his paycheck is sorry.”

Dupree’s laugh was so loud that he almost knocked poor Odell over with the volume. “Well see, there you go!” Dupree bellowed. “You come on down on Friday an’ we got yo’ job back for sure.”

I asked them about the girl too, but it was no use.

At midnight, exactly, Odell stood up to leave. He said goodnight to Dupree and me, then he kissed Coretta’s hand. She even kindled a fire under that quiet little man.

Then Dupree and I settled in to tell lies about the war. Coretta laughed and put away whiskey. Lips and his trio played on. People came in and out of the bar all night but I had given up on Miss Daphne Monet for the evening. I figured that if I got my job back at the plant I could return Mr. Albright’s money. Anyway, the whiskey made me lazy — all I wanted to do was laugh.

Dupree passed out before we finished the second quart; that was about 3 A.M.

Coretta twisted up her nose at the back of his head an said, “He use’ to play till the cock crowed, but that ole cock don’t crow nearly so much no mo’.”