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Jack glanced that way and saw a small square wood-clad house that had mismatched rocking chairs on the sagging porch. There were lights on inside.
“Pull on up there,” said his father crisply.
Father and son unwound their long legs from the diminutive car and headed to the house. There were four beer-drinking men staring at them from the porch of the house next door. Two of them wore Army jackets. One of them had his sleeve pinned to his shoulder marking the location of his missing limb. The largest of them took a cigarette out of his mouth, and called out, “Y’all need sumthin’?”
“Here to see Miss Jessup,” replied Frank, his voice tight, his demeanor the same.
Jack had noticed that his father had slipped the .38 into the back of his waistband.
“Why?” The man stood, showing that he was far bigger than either of the Lees.
“We’re friends of hers,” said Jack.
When the men confronted the Lees as they neared the house, the big fellow looked Jack up and down, taking in the suit, tie, and the froth of whiteness. “You look like the man. You the man?”
“I don’t know what you mean by that,” said Jack. “Miss Jessup came looking for me, but I wasn’t there. So now I’ve come by to see her.”
“What she want with you?”
Frank said, “We don’t want no trouble. If Miss Jessup don’t wanna see us, we’ll just get back in our car and leave you to it.”
The big man said, “Ain’t no trouble on Tuxedo Boulevard, man. We a fancy-ass place. Ain’t you see that?”
It might have been meant partially as a joke, Jack thought, but no one was laughing, least of all him.
Frank said, “I’ve been here before.”
“To dump shit?” The big man pointed to his left at the end of the street where the road ended and the chain-link gate sat fronting the county dump. Beyond the gates were enormous humps of dirt, thin membranes over the catacombs of decaying husks below, the noxious smells of garbage wrapped in red clay hugging all their lungs.
“No, to give Miss Jessup a ride home when the bus wouldn’t stop for her.”
“Why you want that old woman in your car?” said another man, smaller, thinner, but with hard muscles showing through his T-shirt; his bearded face made no attempt to hide his contempt for Frank. He had a dead eye—creamy white wash with veins of red and a black, useless pinpoint in the middle. “You wanna mess with that old n——?”
“Your momma hear you talk like that, Louis Sherman, you gettin’ a fryin’ pan upside your thick head. And there ain’t a durn thing you gonna do ’bout it ’cause your momma is three times your size and four times as tough as you ever thought of bein’ even with that filthy mouth you got on you.”
They turned to see Miss Jessup standing by her screen door. Jack had never seen the woman out of domestic uniform. She wore a long black skirt that hid both her thick, wrinkled knees and her swollen calves; soft bedroom slippers that allowed her pinched feet to spread as far as they wanted; and a white blouse, with sleeves that stopped right above her calcified elbows. Her hair was tied up in the back and off her shoulders like she wore it at Ashby’s. She held a glass of iced tea in one hand and a look of deep disgust on her face. This was the enflamed Miss Jessup looking for a fight, conceding no ground, that Jack had witnessed before as a boy.
“You hear me, Louis Sherman?” she said, staring at the muscled one-eyed man with the beard and that world of contempt clutched tight in his features, like a squirrel with a nut it didn’t know what to do with—hide, chuck, or eat.
Frank watched Sherman nervously, no doubt wondering whether the .38 would eventually be required.
Sherman turned and went back up on the porch and picked up his beer can, and stared off at the darkness with his one eye.
“Mr. Lees,” said Miss Jessup. “What y’all be doin’ here?”
“You know them?” said the big man.
“Whether I know them or don’t know them ain’t your business, is it, Daniel? Do I ask who these other fellers are sittin’ on your daddy’s porch tonight drinkin’ his beer? No, I do not. Why? ’Cause it ain’t my business. That’s between you and your daddy when he finds out, which won’t be from me. And God, too, when you headin’ on out this world. And you ain’t been goin’ to church. So you need to sit down and have a good long talk with God ’bout where it is you headin’.”
“What’s God ever done for me?” countered Daniel.
“You still alive, ain’t you? He didn’t let a war or the white man take you, did he? Yet. You think on that.”
After this cascade of blunt words, Daniel turned and went back to his porch. The other men followed and Frank removed his hand from the small of his back.
Miss Jessup beckoned to them. “Mr. Lees, come on in here. And y’all do it right quick.”
Jack and his father sped up the steps, and she held open the screen door for them.
