The Last Ballad(104)

He walked toward the kitchen, and then he stopped and looked back at Albert, who hadn’t moved at all.

“Come on,” he said.

Albert reached for the jug, but it was empty. He stood from the table, and the ceiling rushed toward him too quickly and the floor fell away from him and the chair in which he’d just been sitting seemed very small and very far from where he stood. He put his hands on the table and sidestepped around it and then he followed Tom into the kitchen and toward a door on the back wall. Tom opened the door and Albert discovered that it had grown dark outside. He’d lost track of time.

A light beyond the kitchen caught his attention, so he turned to his right and saw a doorway to another room. The door was nearly closed, but the crack it left was large enough to spy a nude woman lying on a bare mattress on the floor. Tom took hold of Albert’s arm and pulled him outside. He was already walking through the yard before he realized that the naked woman he’d just seen was the same woman he’d seen earlier.

A greasy, smoky lamp burned out in the dark yard behind the house. The little bit of yellow light it gave off illuminated the body of a colored man surrounded by cords of firewood. He hadn’t halted in his work when they’d come outside, and now he finished off two more pieces as Tom and Albert made their way toward him across the night-damp grass. Crickets and frogs called from the dark.

Tom was the first to speak.

“You James?” he asked.

The colored man froze in mid-swing, left the axe hanging just above his head. He remained there for a moment, as if deciding whether or not to turn to see who’d spoken his name. He lowered the axe and looked at Tom and Albert.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m James.”

He rested the axe on a stump and crossed his hands over the end of the handle. He stood there, breathing heavy, like he was proud. There was nothing Albert hated more than a proud nigger, especially when you had questions for him. The man who stood there sweating and breathing heavily before them could have been thirty or fifty. It was hard for Albert to tell with niggers. He’d slapped one in the face a few months ago for not getting off the sidewalk when a lady passed, and the chief had dressed him down for it. It turned out that he’d slapped a twelve-year-old boy, but Albert could have sworn he’d slapped a man.

Although Albert couldn’t see Tom’s eyes, he knew Tom was probably staring at the axe just as Albert was staring at it. James must have felt their eyes resting on the axe because he lowered it to the ground and gave it a little toss so that it would remain out of his reach. He stared at the ground just in front of the places where Tom and Albert stood.

“Your lady inside here said you know something about a nigger and two white girls who’ve been coming around,” Tom said. “She said they came talking about the union.”

“Yes, sir,” James said. “I might’ve heard something about it.”

“About the union or the nigger and the two girls?”

“About both, sir.”

“About both?” Tom asked.

“Yes, sir, about both.”

“Well, what did you think about it?” Tom asked.

“About what, sir?”

“About the union.”

“I don’t got no need for it,” James said. “They take good care of me here. Ain’t no need to join no union just to cut firewood and make whiskey.”

“I’d say,” Tom said. He laughed, looked over at Albert. Although James did not raise his eyes from their feet, he allowed himself a brief smile.

“What the hell you laughing at?” Albert asked. The words shot from his chest but got caught up in his mouth. He seemed to have spoken a little more slowly than he’d intended.

“I ain’t laughing, sir,” James said. “Ain’t nothing funny.”

“Why you smiling then?”

“I didn’t mean to, sir. It’s just—”

“You ain’t thinking about them two white girls, are you?” Albert asked. He took a step forward, wavered a little, stepped back, and put his hands on his hips. His thumb rested against the holster on his belt.

“No, sir,” James said. “I ain’t thinking about nothing.”

“You better be thinking about something,” Albert said. “We’re asking you some goddamned questions, so you better be thinking about something.”

“Yes, sir,” James said. “Yes, sir.”

“What are you thinking about then?” Albert asked.

James didn’t seem to know how to answer, and now Albert was the one who was laughing. He looked over at Tom, but Tom just stared at the man in front of them.

“That nigger and those two white girls come around here?” Tom asked.

“No, sir,” James said. “Came over to the AME in Shuffletown.”

“They held a meeting there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Damn,” Tom said. “You niggers’ll let anybody speak, won’t you?”

James didn’t say anything, just kept his eyes on the ground.

“What did they look like?” Tom asked.

James seemed to think the question over for a few seconds. He opened his mouth to speak, then he stopped as if reconsidering.

“A Yankee boy,” James finally said. “Seemed kind of sweet if you ask me. Fancy shoes. Nice hat.”