Into a skillet he was laying slices of ham. As the skillet grew hot the grease sputtered and Bugs, crouching on long nigger legs over the fire, turned the ham and broke eggs into the skillet, tipping it from side to side to baste the eggs with the hot fat.
“Will you cut some bread out of that bag, Mister Adams?” Bugs turned from the fire.
“Sure.”
Nick reached in the bag and brought out a loaf of bread. He cut six slices. Ad watched him and leaned forward.
“Let me take your knife, Nick,” he said.
“No, you don’t,” the negro said. “Hang onto your knife, Mister Adams.” The prizefighter sat back.
“Will you bring me the bread, Mister Adams?” Bugs asked. Nick brought it over.
“Do you like to dip your bread in the ham fat?” the negro asked.
“You bet!”
“Perhaps we’d better wait until later. It’s better at the finish of the meal. Here.”
The negro picked up a slice of ham and laid it on one of the pieces of bread, then slid an egg on top of it.
“Just close that sandwich, will you, please, and give it to Mister Francis.”
Ad took the sandwich and started eating.
“Watch out how that egg runs,” the negro warned. “This is for you, Mister Adams. The remainder for myself.”
Nick bit into the sandwich. The negro was sitting opposite him beside Ad. The hot fried ham and eggs tasted wonderful.
“Mister Adams is right hungry,” the negro said. The little man whom Nick knew by name as a former champion fighter was silent. He had said nothing since the negro had spoken about the knife.
“May I offer you a slice of bread dipped right in the hot ham fat?” Bugs said.
“Thanks a lot.”
The little white man looked at Nick.
“Will you have some, Mister Adolph Francis?” Bugs offered from the skillet.
Ad did not answer. He was looking at Nick.
“Mister Francis?” came the nigger’s soft voice.
Ad did not answer. He was looking at Nick.
“I spoke to you. Mister Francis,” the nigger said softly.
Ad kept on looking at Nick. He had his cap down over his eyes. Nick felt nervous.
“How the hell do you get that way?” came out from under the cap sharply at Nick.
“Who the hell do you think you are? You’re a snotty bastard. You come in here where nobody asks you and eat a man’s food and when he asks to borrow a knife you get snotty.”
He glared at Nick, his face was white and his eyes almost out of sight under the cap.
“You’re a hot sketch. Who the hell asked you to butt in here?”
“Nobody.”
“You’re damn right nobody did. Nobody asked you to stay either. You come in here and act snotty about my face and smoke my cigars and drink my liquor and then talk snotty. Where the hell do you think you get off?” Nick said nothing. Ad stood up.
“I’ll tell you, you yellow-livered Chicago bastard. You’re going to get your can knocked off. Do you get that?”
Nick stepped back. The little man came toward him slowly, stepping flat-footed forward, his left foot stepping forward, his right dragging up to it.
“Hit me,” he moved his head. “Try and hit me.”
“I don’t want to hit you.”
“You won’t get out of it that way. You’re going to take a beating, see? Come on and lead at me.”
“Cut it out,” Nick said.
“All right, then, you bastard.”
The little man looked down at Nick’s feet. As he looked down the negro, who had followed behind him as he moved away from the fire, set himself and tapped him across the base of the skull. He fell forward and Bugs dropped the cloth-wrapped blackjack on the grass. The little man lay there, his face in the grass. The negro picked him up, his head hanging, and carried him to the fire. His face looked bad, the eyes open. Bugs laid him down gently.
“Will you bring me the water in the bucket, Mister Adams,” he said. “I’m afraid I hit him just a little hard.”
The negro splashed water with his hand on the man’s face and pulled his ears gently. The eyes closed.
Bugs stood up.
“He’s all right,” he said. “There’s nothing to worry about. I’m sorry, Mister Adams.”
“It’s all right.” Nick was looking down at the little man. He saw the blackjack on the grass and picked it up. It had a flexible handle and was limber in his hand. It was made of worn black leather with a handkerchief wrapped around the heavy end.
“That’s a whalebone handle,” the negro smiled. “They don’t make them any more. I didn’t know how well you could take care of yourself and, anyway, I didn’t want you to hurt him or mark him up no more than he is.”
The negro smiled again.
“You hurt him yourself.”
“I know how to do it. He won’t remember nothing of it. I have to do it to change him when he gets that way.”
Nick was still looking down at the little man, lying, his eyes closed in the firelight. Bugs put some wood on the fire.
“Don’t you worry about him none, Mister Adams. I seen him like this plenty of times before.”
“What made him crazy?” Nick asked.
“Oh, a lot of things,” the negro answered from the fire. “Would you like a cup of this coffee, Mister Adams?”
He handed Nick the cup and smoothed the coat he had placed under the unconscious man’s head.
“He took too many beatings, for one thing,” the negro sipped the coffee. “But that just made him sort of simple. Then his sister was his manager and they was always being written up in the papers all about brothers and sisters and how she loved her brother and how he loved his sister, and then they got married in New York and that made a lot of unpleasantness.”
“I remember about it.”
“Sure. Of course they wasn’t brother and sister no more than a rabbit, but there was a lot of people didn’t like it either way and they commenced to have disagreements, and one day she just went off and never come back.”
He drank the coffee and wiped his lips with the pink palm of his hand.
“He just went crazy. Will you have some more coffee, Mister Adams?”
“Thanks.”
“I seen her a couple of times,” the negro went on. “She was an awful good-looking woman. Looked enough like him to be twins. He wouldn’t be bad-looking without his face all busted.”
He stopped. The story seemed to be over.
“I met him in jail,” the negro said. “He was busting people all the time after she went away and they put him in jail. I was in for cuttin’ a man.”
He smiled, and went on soft-voiced:
“Right away I liked him and when I got out I looked him up. He likes to think I’m crazy and I don’t mind. I like to be with him and I like seeing the country and I don’t have to commit no larceny to do it. I like living like a gentleman.”
“What do you all do?” Nick asked.
“Oh, nothing. Just move around. He’s got money.”
“He must have made a lot of money.”
“Sure. He spent all his money, though. Or they took it away from him. She sends him money.”
He poked up the fire.
“She’s a mighty fine woman,” he said. “She looks enough like him to be his own twin.”
The negro looked over at the little man, lying breathing heavily. His blond hair was down over his forehead. His mutilated face looked childish in repose.
“I can wake him up any time now, Mister Adams. If you don’t mind I wish you’d sort of pull out. I don’t like to not be hospitable, but it might disturb him back again to see you. I hate to have to thump him and it’s the only thing to do when he gets started. I have to sort of keep him away from people. You don’t mind, do you, Mister Adams? No, don’t thank me, Mister Adams.
I’d have warned you about him but he seemed to have taken such a liking to you and I thought things were going to be all right. You’ll hit a town about two miles up the track. Mancelona they call it. Good-bye. I wish we could ask you to stay the night but it’s just out of the question. Would you like to take some of that ham and some bread with you? No? You better take a sandwich,” all this in a low, smooth, polite nigger voice.
“Good. Well, good-bye, Mister Adams. Good-bye and good luck!”
Nick walked away from the fire across the clearing to the railway tracks. Out of the range of the fire he listened. The low soft voice of the negro was talking. Nick could not hear the words. Then he heard the little man say, “I got an awful headache, Bugs.”
“You’ll feel better. Mister Francis,” the negro’s voice soothed. “Just you drink a cup of this hot coffee.”
Nick climbed the embankment and started up the track. He found he had a ham sandwich in his hand and put it in his pocket. Looking back from the mounting grade before the track curved into the hills he could see the firelight in the clearing.
CHAPTER VI
Nick sat against the wall of the church where they had dragged him to be clear of machine-gun fire in the street. Both legs stuck out awkwardly. He had been hit in the spine. His face was sweaty and dirty. The sun shone on his face. The day was very hot. Rinaldi, big backed, his equipment sprawling, lay face downward against the wall. Nick looked straight ahead brilliantly. The pink wall of the house opposite had fallen out from
