“Yell,” the man with the buttoned coat said. “Just try it once.”
Red was at the crap-table. She saw his head turned, the cup in his lifted hand. With it he made her a short, cheery salute. He watched her disappear through the door, between the two men. Then he looked briefly about the room. His face was bold and calm, but there were two white lines at the base of his nostrils and his forehead was damp. He rattled the cup and threw the dice steadily.
“Eleven,” the dealer said.
“Let it lay,” Red said. “I’ll pass a million times tonight.”
They helped Temple into the car. The man in the buttoned coat took the wheel. Where the drive joined the lane that led to the highroad a long touring car was parked. When they passed it Temple saw, leaning to a cupped match, Popeye’s delicate hooked profile beneath the slanted hat as he lit the cigarette. The match flipped outward like a dying star in miniature, sucked with the profile into darkness by the rush of their passing.
XXV
The tables had been moved to one end of the dance floor. On each one was a black table-cloth. The curtains were still drawn; a thick, salmon-colored light fell through them. Just beneath the orchestra platform the coffin sat. It was an expensive one: black, with silver fittings, the trestles hidden by a mass of flowers. In wreaths and crosses and other shapes of ceremonial mortality, the mass appeared to break in a symbolical wave over the bier and on upon the platform and the piano, the scent of them thickly oppressive.
The proprietor of the place moved about among the tables, speaking to the arrivals as they entered and found seats. The Negro waiters, in black shirts beneath their starched jackets, were already moving in and out with glasses and bottles of ginger ale. They moved with swaggering and decorous repression; already the scene was vivid, with a hushed, macabre air a little febrile.
The archway to the dice-room was draped in black. A black pall lay upon the crap-table, upon which the overflow of floral shapes was beginning to accumulate. People entered steadily, the men in dark suits of decorous restraint, others in the light, bright shades of spring, increasing the atmosphere of macabre paradox. The women—the younger ones—wore bright colors also, in hats and scarves; the older ones in sober gray and black and navy blue, and glittering with diamonds: matronly figures resembling housewives on a Sunday afternoon excursion.
The room began to hum with shrill, hushed talk. The waiters moved here and there with high, precarious trays, their white jackets and black shirts resembling photograph negatives. The proprietor went from table to table with his bald head, a huge diamond in his black cravat, followed by the bouncer, a thick, muscle-bound, bullet-headed man who appeared to be on the point of bursting out of his dinner-jacket through the rear, like a cocoon.
In a private dining-room, on a table draped in black, sat a huge bowl of punch floating with ice and sliced fruit. Beside it leaned a fat man in a shapeless greenish suit, from the sleeves of which dirty cuffs fell upon hands rimmed with black nails. The soiled collar was wilted about his neck in limp folds, knotted by a greasy black tie with an imitation ruby stud. His face gleamed with moisture and he adjured the throng about the bowl in a harsh voice:
“Come on, folks. It’s on Gene. It dont cost you nothing. Step up and drink. There wasn’t never a better boy walked than him.” They drank and fell back, replaced by others with extended cups. From time to time a waiter entered with ice and fruit and dumped them into the bowl; from a suit case under the table Gene drew fresh bottles and decanted them into the bowl; then, proprietorial, adjurant, sweating, he resumed his harsh monologue, mopping his face on his sleeve. “Come on, folks. It’s all on Gene. I aint nothing but a bootlegger, but he never had a better friend than me. Step up and drink, folks. There’s more where that come from.”
From the dance hall came a strain of music. The people entered and found seats. On the platform was the orchestra from a downtown hotel, in dinner coats. The proprietor and a second man were conferring with the leader.
“Let them play jazz,” the second man said. “Never nobody liked dancing no better than Red.”
“No, no,” the proprietor said. “Time Gene gets them all ginned up on free whiskey, they’ll start dancing. It’ll look bad.”
“How about the Blue Danube?” the leader said.
“No, no; dont play no blues, I tell you,” the proprietor said. “There’s a dead man in that bier.”
“That’s not blues,” the leader said.
“What is it?” the second man said.
“A waltz. Strauss.”
“A wop?” the second man said. “Like hell. Red was an American. You may not be, but he was. Dont you know anything American? Play I Cant Give You Anything but Love. He always liked that.”
“And get them all to dancing?” the proprietor said. He glanced back at the tables, where the women were beginning to talk a little shrilly. “You better start off with Nearer, My God, to Thee,” he said, “and sober them up some. I told Gene it was risky about that punch, starting it so soon. My suggestion was to wait until we started back to town. But I might have knowed somebody’d have to turn it into a carnival. Better start off solemn and keep it up until I give you the sign.”
“Red wouldn’t like it solemn,” the second man said. “And you know it.”
“Let him go somewheres else, then,” the proprietor said. “I just done this as an accommodation. I aint running no funeral parlor.”
The orchestra played Nearer, My God, to Thee. The audience grew quiet. A woman in a red dress came in the door unsteadily. “Whoopee,” she said, “so long, Red. He’ll be in hell before I could even reach Little Rock.”
“Shhhhhhhh!” voices said. She fell into a seat. Gene came to the door and stood there until the music stopped.
“Come on, folks,” he shouted, jerking his arms in a fat, sweeping gesture, “come and get it. It’s on Gene. I dont want a dry throat or eye in this place in ten minutes.” Those at the rear moved toward the door. The proprietor sprang to his feet and jerked his hand at the orchestra. The cornetist rose and played In That Haven of Rest in solo, but the crowd at the back of the room continued to dwindle through the door where Gene stood waving his arm. Two middle-aged women were weeping quietly beneath flowered hats.
They surged and clamored about the diminishing bowl. From the dance hall came the rich blare of the cornet. Two soiled young men worked their way toward the table, shouting “Gangway. Gangway” monotonously, carrying suit cases. They opened them and set bottles on the table, while Gene, frankly weeping now, opened them and decanted them into the bowl. “Come up, folks. I couldn’t a loved him no better if he’d a been my own son,” he shouted hoarsely, dragging his sleeve across his face.
A waiter edged up to the table with a bowl of ice and fruit and went to put them into the punch bowl. “What the hell you doing?” Gene said, “putting that slop in there? Get to hell away from here.”
“Ra-a-a-a-y-y-y-y!” they shouted, clashing their cups, drowning all save the pantomime as Gene knocked the bowl of fruit from the waiter’s hand and fell again to dumping raw liquor into the bowl, sploshing it into and upon the extended hands and cups. The two youths opened bottles furiously.
As though swept there upon a brassy blare of music the proprietor appeared in the door, his face harried, waving his arms. “Come on, folks,” he shouted, “let’s finish the musical program. It’s costing us money.”
“Hell with it,” they shouted.
“Costing who money?”
“Who cares?”
“Costing who money?”
“Who begrudges it? I’ll pay it. By God, I’ll buy him two funerals.”
“Folks! Folks!” the proprietor shouted. “Dont you realise there’s a bier in that room?”
“Costing who money?”
“Beer?” Gene said. “Beer?” he said in a broken voice. “Is anybody here trying to insult me by—”
“He begrudges Red the money.”
“Who does?”
“Joe does, the cheap son of a bitch.”
“Is somebody here trying to insult me—”
“Let’s move the funeral, then. This is not the only place in town.”
“Let’s move Joe.”
“Put the son of a bitch in a coffin. Let’s have two funerals.”
“Beer? Beer? Is somebody—”
“Put the son of a bitch in a coffin. See how he likes it.”
“Put the son of a bitch in a coffin,” the woman in red shrieked. They rushed toward the door, where the proprietor stood waving his hands above his head, his voice shrieking out of the uproar before he turned and fled.
In the main room a male quartet engaged from a vaudeville house was singing. They were singing mother songs in close harmony; they sang Sonny Boy. The weeping was general among the older women. Waiters were now carrying cups of punch in to them and they sat holding the cups in their fat, ringed hands, crying.
The orchestra played again. The woman in red staggered into the room. “Come on, Joe,” she shouted, “open the game. Get that damn stiff out of here and open the game.” A man tried to hold her; she turned upon him with a burst of filthy language and went on
