AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She raised the tin cup to her lips and spit snuff in it again, then picked up her iron and began pressing a starched white shirt. She smelled of dry sweat, Copenhagen, and the heat rising from the ironing board. The walls of her house had been pasted with pages from magazines, then overlaid with mismatched strips of water-streaked wallpaper. The floor was covered with a rug whose thread had split like crimped straw, and the few pieces of furniture she owned looked as though they'd been carted home a piece at a time from the junkyard where Tee Beau used to work.
I sat down on a straight-backed chair next to her ironing board.
"I can't promise you anything," I said, "but if I find Tee Beau, I'll try to help him. Maybe we can get the governor to commute his sentence. Tee Beau saved the life of a police officer. That could mean a lot, Tante Lemon."
"The life of that pimp mean a lot."
"What?"
"Hipolyte Broussard a pimp, and he was gonna make Tee Beau do it, too."
"I never heard that Broussard was involved with prostitution."
"White people hear what they want to hear."
"I didn't see anything like that in the case record, either. Who'd you tell this to?"
"I ain't tole nobody. Ain't nobody ax me."
"Where was he pimping, Tante Lemon?"
"Out of the juke, there on the four-corner," she said, and nodded her head toward the outside of the house. "Out in them camps, where them farm worker stay at."
"And he wanted Tee Beau to do it, too?"
"He make Tee Beau drive them girls from the juke down to the camp. Tee Beau say, 'I cain't do that no more, Hipolyte.' Hipolyte say, 'You gonna do it, 'cause you don't, I gonna tell your P.O. you been stealing from me and you going back to jail.' And it don't matter Tee Beau do what he say or not. Hipolyte keep making him feel awful all the time, sticking his thumb in that little boy seat, in front of all them people, shame him till he come home and cry. If that man ain't dead now, I go kill him myself, me."
"Tante Lemon, why didn't you tell this to somebody?"
"I tole you, they ain't ax me. You think them people in that courtroom care what an old nigger woman say?"
"You didn't tell anybody because you thought it would hurt Tee Beau, that people would be sure he did it."
It started raining outside. The hinged flap on the side window was raised with a stick, and in the gray light her skin had the color of a dull penny. She mashed the iron up and down on the shirt she was ironing.
"I can tell lots of things 'bout that juke up the four-corner, 'bout the traiteur woman run that place with Hipolyte, 'bout them crib they got there. Ain't nobody interested, Mr. Dave. Don't be telling me they are, no. Just like when I up in Camp I in Angola. On the Red Hat gang they run them boys up and down the levee with they wheelbarrow, beat them every day with the Black Betty, shoot them and bury them right there in the Miss'sippi levee. Everybody knowed it, nobody care. Ain't nobody care about Tee Beau or what I got to say now."
"You should have talked to somebody. They didn't give Tee Beau the chair because he killed Hipolyte. It was the way he did it."
"Tee Beau in this house, shelling crawfish. Right here," she said, and tapped her finger on the ironing board.
"All right. But somebody drove the bus off the jack on top of Hipolyte. Tee Beau's fingerprints were all over the steering wheel. His muddy shoe prints were all over the floor pedals. Nobody else's. Then while Hipolyte was lying under the brake drum with his back broken, somebody stuffed an oil rag in his mouth so he could spend two hours strangling to death."
"It wasn't long enough."
"Where is Tee Beau?"
"I ain't gonna tell you no more. Waste of time," she said, took a cigarette from a pack on the ironing board, and lit it. She blew the smoke out in the humid air. "You a white man. Colored folk ain't never gonna be your bidness. You come round now 'cause you need Tee Beau catch that white trash shot you. You just see a little colored boy can he'p you now. But you cain't be knowing what he really like, how he hurt inside, how much he love his gran'maman, how much he care for Dorothea and what he willing to do for that little girl. You don't be knowing none of these things, Mr. Dave."
"Who's Dorothea?"
"Go up the juke, ax her who she is. Ax her about Hipolyte, about what Tee Beau do for her. You, that's gonna take him up to the Red Hat."
I said good-bye to her, but she didn't bother to answer. It was raining hard when I stepped off the gallery, and drops of mud danced in the dirt yard. Down the street at the four-corners, the clapboard facade of the juke joint glistened in the gray light, and the scroll of neon over the door, which read big mama goula's, looked like purple smoke in the rain that blew back off the eaves.
The inside was crowded with Negroes, the air thick with cigarette smoke, the smell of dried sweat, muscat, talcum powder, chitlins, gumbo, flat beer, and bathroom disinfectant. The jukebox was deafening, and the pool players rifled the balls into side pockets, shouting and slamming the rack down on the table's slate surface. Beyond the dance floor a zydeco band with an accordion, washboard, thimbles, and an electric bass was setting up on a small stage surrounded by orange lights and chicken wire. Behind the musicians a huge window fan sucked the cigarette smoke out into the rain, and their clothes fluttered in the breeze like bird's feathers. Two deep at the bar, the customers ate boudin and pickled hog's feet off paper plates, drank long-necked Jax and wine spotioti, a mixture of muscat and whiskey that can fry your head for a week.
I stood at the end of the bar, saw the eyes flick momentarily sideways, then heard the conversations resume as though I were not there. I waited for the bartender to reach that moment when he would decide to recognize me. He walked on the duckboards to within three feet of me and began lifting handfuls of beer bottles between his fingers from a cardboard carton, fitting them down into the ice bin. There was a thin, dead cigar in his mouth.
