Boon said rapidly. “They probably are all peeping from behind the window curtains at that automobile.” The door opened. It was a young Negro woman but before she could open her mouth a white woman pushed her aside — a young woman too, with a kind hard handsome face and hair that was too red, with two of the biggest yellowish-colored diamonds I ever saw in her ears.
“Dammit, Boon,” she said. “The minute Corrie got that dispatch yesterday I told her to telegraph you right back not to bring that child here. I’ve already had one in the house for a week now, and one hell-on-wheels is enough for any house or street either for that matter. Or even all Memphis, providing it’s that one we already got. And dont lie that you never got the message neither.”
“I didn’t,” Boon said. “We must have already left Jefferson before it got there. What do you want me to do with him then? tie him out in the yard?”
“Come on in,” she said. She moved out of the door so we could enter; as soon as we did so, the maid locked the door again. I didn’t know why then; maybe that was the way all people in Memphis did, even while they were at home. It was like any other hall, with a stairway going up, only at once I smelled something; the whole house smelled that way. I had never smelled it before. I didn’t dislike it; I was just surprised.
I mean, as soon as I smelled it, it was like a smell I had been waiting all my life to smell. I think you should be tumbled pell-mell, without warning, only into experience which you might well have spent the rest of your life not having to meet.
But with an inevitable (ay, necessary) one, it’s not really decent of Circumstance, Fate, not to prepare you first, especially when the preparation is as simple as just being fifteen years old. That was the kind of smell it was. The woman was still talking.
“You know as well as I do that Mr Binford disapproves like hell of kids using houses for holiday vacations; you heard him last summer when Corrie brought that little s.o.b. in here the first time because she claims he dont get enough refinement on that Arkansas tenant farm.
Like Mr Binford says, they’ll be in here soon enough anyhow, so why rush them until at least they have some jack and are capable of spending it. Not to mention the customers, coming in here for business and finding instead we’re running a damn kindergarden.” We were in the dining room now. It had a Pianola in it. The woman was still talking. “What’s his name?”
“Lucius,” Boon said. “Make your manners to Miss Reba,” he told me. I did so, the way I always did: that I reckon Grandfather’s mother taught him and Grandmother taught Father and Mother taught us: what Ned called “drug my foot.” When I straightened up, Miss Reba was watching me. She had a curious look on her face.
“I’ll be damned,” she said. “Minnie, did you see that? Is Miss Corrie—”
“She dressing as fast as she can,” the maid said. And that was when I saw it. I mean, Minnie’s tooth. I mean, that was how — yes, why — I, you, people, everybody, remembered Minnie. She had beautiful teeth anyhow, like small richly alabaster matched and evenly serrated headstones against the rich chocolate of her face when she smiled or spoke. But she had more.
The middle right-hand upper one was gold; in her dark face it reigned like a queen among the white dazzle of the others, seeming actually to glow, gleam as with a slow inner fire or lambence of more than gold, until that single tooth appeared even bigger than both of Miss Reba’s yellowish diamonds put together. (Later I learned — no matter how — that she had had the gold one taken out and an ordinary white one, like anybody else’s, put in; and I grieved.
I thought that, had I been of her race and age group, it would have been worth being her husband just to watch that tooth in action across the table every day; a child of eleven, it seemed to me that the very food it masticated must taste different, better.)
Miss Reba turned to Boon again. “What you been doing? wrassling with hogs?”
“We got in a mudhole back down the road. We drove up. The automobile’s outside now.”
“I saw it,” Miss Reba said. “We all did. Dont tell me it’s yours. Just tell me if the police are after it. If they are, get it away from my door. Mr Binford’s strict about having police around here too. So am I.”
“The automobile’s all right,” Boon said.
“It better be,” Miss Reba said. She was looking at me again. She said, “Lucius,” not to anybody. “Too bad you didn’t get here sooner. Mr Binford likes kids. He still likes them even after he begins to have doubts, and this last week would have raised doubts in anybody that aint a ossified corpse. I mean, he was still willing to give Otis the benefit of the doubt to take him to the zoo right after dinner. Lucius could have gone too. But then on the other hand, maybe not.
If Otis is still using up doubts at the same rate he was before they left here, he aint coming back — providing there’s some way to get him up close enough to the cage for one of them lions or tigers to reach him — providing a lion or tiger would want him, which they wouldn’t if they’d ever spent a week in the same house with him.” She was still looking at me. She said, “Lucius,” again, not at anybody.
Then she said to Minnie: “Go up and tell everybody to stay out of the bathroom for the next half an hour.” She said to Boon: “You got a change of clothes with you?”
“Yes,” Boon said.
“Then wash yourself off and put them on; this is a decent place: not a joint. Let them use Vera’s room, Minnie. Vera’s visiting her folks up in Paducah.” She said to Boon or maybe to both of us: “Minnie fixed a bed for Otis up in the attic. Lucius can sleep with him tonight—”
There were feet on the stairs, then in the hall and in the door. This time it was a big girl. I dont mean fat: just big, like Boon was big, but still a girl, young too, with dark hair and blue eyes and at first I thought her face was plain. But she came into the room already looking at me, and I knew it didn’t matter what her face was. “Hi, kiddo,” Boon said. But she didn’t pay any attention to him at all yet; she and Miss Reba were both looking at me.
“Watch now,” Miss Reba said. “Lucius, this is Miss Corrie.” I made my manners again. “See what I mean?” Miss Reba said. “You brought that nephew of yours over here hunting refinement. Here it is, waiting for him. He wont know what it means, let alone why he’s doing it. But maybe Lucius could learn him to at least ape it. All right,” she said to Boon. “Go get cleaned up.”
“Maybe Corrie’ll come help us,” Boon said. He was holding Miss Corrie’s hand. “Hi, kiddo,” he said again.
“Not looking like a shanty-boat swamp rat,” Miss Reba said. “I’ll keep this damned place respectable on Sunday anyhow.”
Minnie showed us where the room and the bathroom were upstairs and gave us soap and a towel apiece and went out. Boon put his grip on the bed and opened it and took out a clean shirt and his other pants. They were his everyday pants but the Sunday ones he had on wouldn’t be fit to wear anywhere until they were cleaned with naphtha probably. “You see?” he said. “I told you so. I done the best I could to make you bring at least a clean shirt.”
“My blouse aint muddy,” I said.
“But you ought to have a fresh one just on principle to put on after you bathe.”
“I aint going to bathe,” I said. “I had a bath yesterday.”
“So did I,” he said. “But you heard what Miss Reba said, didn’t you?”
“I heard her,” I said. “I never knew any ladies anywhere that wasn’t trying to make somebody take a bath.”
“By the time you’ve known Miss Reba a few hours longer, you’ll find out you done learned something else about ladies too: that when she suggests you to do something, it’s a good idea to do it while you’re still deciding whether you’re going to or not.” He had already unpacked his other pants and shirt.
It doesn’t take long to unpack one pair of pants and one shirt from one grip, but he seemed to be having trouble, mainly about putting them down after he took them out, not looking at me, bending over the open grip, busy, holding the shirt in his hand while he decided where to put the pants, then putting the shirt on the bed and picking up the pants again and moving them about a foot further along the bed, then picking up the shirt again and putting it where the pants were; then he cleared his throat loud and hard and went to the window and opened it and leaned out and spit and closed the window and came
