v5.docxGoing to Meet the Man
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, trying to laugh, “I guess I’m tired.”
“You’ve been working too hard,” she said. “I keep telling you.”
“Well, goddammit, woman,” he said, “it’s not my fault!” He tried again; he wretchedly failed again. Then he just lay there, silent, angry, and helpless. Excitement filled him like a toothache, but it refused to enter his flesh. He stroked her breast. This was his wife. He could not ask her to do just a little thing for him, just to help him out, just for a little while, the way he could ask a nigger girl to do it. He lay there, and he sighed. The image of a black girl caused a distant excitement in him, like a far-away light; but, again, the excitement was more like pain; instead of forcing him to act, it made action impossible.
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“Go to sleep,” she said, gently, “you got a hard day tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” he said, and rolled over on his side, facing her, one hand still on one breast. “Goddamn the niggers. The black stinking coons. You’d think they’d learn. Wouldn’t you think they’d learn? I mean, wouldn’t you?”
“They going to be out there tomorrow,” she said, and took his hand away, “get some sleep.”
He lay there, one hand between his legs, staring at the frail sanctuary of his wife. A faint light came from the shutters; the moon was full. Two dogs, far away, were barking at each other, back and forth, insistently, as though they were agreeing to make an appointment. He heard a car coming north on the road and he half sat up, his hand reaching for his holster, which was on a chair near the bed, on top of his pants. The lights hit the shutters and seemed to travel across the room and then went out. The sound of the car slipped away, he heard it hit gravel, then heard it no more. Some liver-lipped students, probably, heading back to that college—but coming from where? His watch said it was two in the morning. They could be coming from anywhere, from out of state most likely, and they would be at the court-house tomorrow. The niggers were getting ready. Well, they would be ready, too.
He moaned. He wanted to let whatever was in him out; but it wouldn’t come out. Goddamn! he said aloud, and turned again, on his side, away from Grace, staring at the shutters. He was a big, healthy man and he had never had any trouble sleeping. And he wasn’t old enough yet to have any trouble getting it up—he was only forty-two. And he was a good man, a God-fearing man, he had tried to do his duty all his life, and he had been a deputy sheriff for several years. Nothing had ever bothered him before, certainly not getting it up. Sometimes, sure, like any other man, he knew that he wanted a little more spice than Grace could give him and he would drive over yonder and pick up a black piece or arrest her, it came to the same thing, but he couldn’t do that now, no more. There was no telling what might happen once your ass was in the air. And they were low enough to kill a man then, too, every one of them, or the girl herself might do it, right while she was making believe you made her feel so good. The niggers. What had the
Petrified Man
“Reach in my purse and git me a cigarette without no powder in it if you kin, Mrs. Fletcher, honey,” said Leota to her ten o’clock shampoo-and-set customer. “I don’t like no perfumed cigarettes.”
Mrs. Fletcher gladly reached over to the lavender shelf under the lavender-framed mirror, shook a hair net loose from the clasp of the patent-leather bag, and slapped her hand down quickly on a powder puff which burst out when the purse was opened.
“Why, look at the peanuts, Leota!” said Mrs. Fletcher in her marvelling voice.
“Honey, them goobers has been in my purse a week if they’s been in it a day. Mrs. Pike bought them peanuts.”
“Who’s Mrs. Pike?” asked Mrs. Fletcher, settling back. Hidden in this den of curling fluid and henna packs, separated by a lavender swing-door from the other customers, who were being gratified in other booths, she could give her curiosity its freedom. She looked expectantly at the black part in Leota’s yellow curls as she bent to light the cigarette.
“Mrs. Pike is this lady from New Orleans,” said Leota, puffing, and pressing into Mrs. Fletcher’s scalp with strong red-nailed fingers. “A friend, not a customer. You see, like maybe I told you last time, me and Fred and Sal and
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Joe all had us a fuss, so Sal and Joe up and moved out, so we didn’t do a thing but rent out their room. So we rented it to Mrs. Pike. And Mr. Pike.” She flicked an ash into the basket of dirty towels. “Mrs. Pike is a very decided blonde. She bought me the peanuts.”
“She must be cute,” said Mrs. Fletcher.
“Honey, ‘cute’ ain’t the word for what she is. I’m tellin’ you, Mrs. Pike is attractive. She has her a good time. She’s got a sharp eye out, Mrs. Pike has.”
She dashed the comb through the air, and paused dramatically as a cloud of Mrs. Fletcher’s hennaed hair floated out of the lavender teeth like a small storm-cloud.
“Hair fallin’.”
“Aw, Leota.”
“Uh-huh, commencin’ to fall out,” said Leota, combing again, and letting fall another cloud.
“Nope.” She combed again. “Just fallin’ out.”
“Bet it was that last perm’nent you gave me that did it,” Mrs. Fletcher said cruelly. “Remember you cooked me fourteen minutes.”
“You had fourteen minutes comin’ to you,” said Leota with finality.
“Bound to be somethin’,” persisted Mrs. Fletcher. “Dandruff, dandruff. I couldn’t of caught a thing like that from Mr. Fletcher, could I?”
“Well,” Leota answered at last, “you know what I heard in here yestiddy, one of Thelma’s ladies was settin’ over yonder in Thelma’s booth gittin’ a machineless, and I don’t mean to insist or insinuate or anything, Mrs. Fletcher, but Thelma’s lady just happ’med to throw out—I forgotten what she was talkin’ about at the time—that you was p-r-e-g., and lots of times that’ll make your hair do awful funny, fall out and God knows what all. It just ain’t our fault, is the way I look at it.”
There was a pause. The women stared at each other in the mirror.
“Who was it?” demanded Mrs. Fletcher.
“Honey, I really couldn’t say,” said Leota. “Not that you look it.”
“Where’s Thelma? I’ll get it out of her,” said Mrs. Fletcher.
“Now, honey, I wouldn’t go
