So we got up from the table and Eunice lumbers over to the window and looks out to the chinaberry tree and says, “Birds settling in their roost—time we went to bed. You have your old room, Marge, and I’ve fixed a cot for this gentleman on the back porch.”
It took a solid minute for that to sink in.
I said, “And what, if I’m not too bold to ask, is the objection to my sleeping with my lawful wife?”
Then they both started yelling at me.
So Marge threw a conniption fit right then and there. “Stop it, stop it, stop it! I can’t sand any more. Go on, babydoll—got on and sleep wherever they say. Tomorrow we’ll see.…”
Eunice says, “I swanee if the child hasn’t got a grain of sense, after all.”
“Poor dear,” says Olivia-Ann, wrapping her arm around Marge’s waist and herding her off, “poor dear, so young, so innocent. Let’s us just go and have a good cry on Olivia-Ann’s shoulder.”
May, June, and July and the best part of August I’ve squatted and sweltered on that damn back porch without an ounce of screening. And Marge—she hasn’t opened her mouth in protest, not once!
This part of Alabama is swampy, with mosquitoes that could murder a buffalo, given half a chance, not to mention dangerous flying roaches and a posse of local rats big enough to haul a wagon train from here to Timbuctoo. Oh, if it wasn’t for that little unborn George I would’ve been making dust tracks on the road, way before now. I mean to say I haven’t had five seconds alone with Marge since that first night.
One or the other is always chaperoning and last week they like to have blown their tops when Marge locked herself in her room and they couldn’t find me nowhere. The truth is I’d been down watching the niggers bale cotton but just for spite I let on to Eunice like Marge and I’d been up to no good. After that they added Bluebell to the shift.
And all this time I haven’t even had cigarette change.
Eunice has hounded me day in and day out about getting a job. “Why don’t the little heathen go out and get some honest work?” says she. As you’ve probably noticed, she never speaks to me directly, though more often than not I am the only one in her royal presence.
“If he was any sort of man you could call a man he’d be trying to put a crust of bread in that girl’s mouth instead of stuffing his own off my vittles.” I think you should know that I’ve been living almost exclusively on cold yams and leftover grits for three months and thirteen days and I’ve been down to consult Dr. A. N. Carter twice. He’s not exactly sure whether I have the scurvy or not.
And as for my not working, I’d like to know what a man of my abilities, a man who held a perfectly swell position with the Cash’n’ Carry would find to do in a flea-bag like Admiral’s Mill? There is all of one store here and Mr. Tubberville, the proprietor, is actually so lazy it’s painful for him to have to sell anything. Then we have the Morning Star Baptist Church but they already have a preacher, an awful old turd named Shell whom Eunice drug over one day to see about the salvation of my soul.
I heard him with my own ears tell her I was too far gone.
But it’s what Eunice has done to Marge that really takes the cake. She has turned that girl against me in the most villainous fashion that words could not describe. Why, she even reached the point when she was sassing me back, but I provided her with a couple of good slaps and put a stop to that. No wife of mine is ever going to be disrespectful to me, not on your life!
The enemy lines are stretched tight: Bluebell, Olivia-Ann, Eunice, Marge, and the whole rest of Admiral’s Mill (pop. 342). Allies: none. Such was the situation as of Sunday, August 12, when the attempt was made upon my very life.
Yesterday was quiet and hot enough to melt rock. The trouble began at exactly two o’clock. I know because Eunice has one of those fool cuckoo contraptions and it scares the daylights out of me. I was minding my own personal business in the parlor, composing a song on the upright piano which Eunice bought for Olivia-Ann and hired her a teacher to come all the way from Columbus, Georgia, once a week.
Postmistress Delancey, who was my friend till she decided that it was maybe not so wise, says that the fancy teacher tore out of this house one afternoon like old Adolf Hitler was on his tail and leaped in his Ford coupé, never to be heard from again. Like I say, I’m trying to keep cool in the parlor not bothering a living soul when Olivia-Ann trots in with her hair all twisted up in curlers and shrieks, “Cease that infernal racket this very instant! Can’t you give a body a minute’s rest? And get off my piano right smart. It’s not your piano, it’s my piano and if you don’t get off it right smart I’ll have you in court like a shot the first Monday in September.”
She’s not anything in this world but jealous on account of I’m a natural-born musician and the songs I make up out of my own head are absolutely marvelous.
“And just look what you’ve done to my genuine ivory keys, Mr. Sylvester,” says she, trotting over to the piano, “torn nearly every one of them off right at the roots for purentee meanness, that’s what you’ve done.”
She knows good and well that the piano was ready for the junk heap the moment I entered this house.
I said, “Seeing as you’re such a know-it-all, Miss Olivia-Ann, maybe it would interest you to know that I’m in the possession of a few interesting tales myself. A few things that maybe other people would be very grateful to know. Like what happened to Mrs. Harry Steller Smith, as for instance.”
Remember Mrs. Harry Steller Smith?
She paused and looked at the empty bird cage. “You gave me your oath,” says she and turned the most terrifying shade of purple.
“Maybe I did and again maybe I didn’t,” says I. “You did an evil thing when you betrayed Eunice that way but if some people will leave other people alone then maybe I can overlook it.”
Well, sir, she walked out of there just as nice and quiet as you please. So I went and stretched out on the sofa which is the most horrible piece of furniture I’ve ever seen and is part of a matched set Eunice bought in Atlanta in 1912 and paid two thousand dollars for, cash—or so she claims.
This set is black and olive plush and smells like wet chicken feathers on a damp day. There is a big table in one corner of the parlor which supports two pictures of Miss E and O-A’s mama and papa. Papa is kind of handsome but just between you and me I’m convinced he has black blood in him from somewhere. He was a captain in the Civil War and that is one thing I’ll never forget on account of his sword which is displayed over the mantel and figures prominently in the action yet to come. Mama has that hang-dog, halfwit look like Olivia-Ann, though I must say Mama carries it better.
So I had just dozed off when I heard Eunice bellowing, “Where is he? Where is he?” And the next thing I know she’s framed in the doorway with her hands planted plumb on those hippo hips and the whole pack scrunched up behind her: Bluebell, Olivia-Ann and Marge.
Several seconds passed with Eunice tapping her big old bare foot just as fast and furious as she could and fanning her fat face with this cardboard picture of Niagara Falls.
“Where is it?” says she. “Where’s my hundred dollars that he made away with while my trusting back was turned?”
“This is the straw that broke the camel’s back,” says I, but I was too hot and tired to get up.
“That’s not the only back that’s going to be broke,” says she, her bug eyes about to pop clear out of their sockets. “That was my funeral money and I want it back. Wouldn’t you know he’d steal from the dead?”
“Maybe he didn’t take it,” says Marge.
“You keep your mouth out of this, missy,” says Olivia-Ann.
“He stole my money sure as shooting,” says Eunice. “Why, look at his eyes—black with guilt!”
I yawned and said, “Like they say in the courts—if the party of the first part falsely accuses the party of the second part then the party of the first part can be locked away in jail even if the State Home is where they rightfully belong for the protection of all concerned.”
“God will punish him,” says Eunice.
“Oh, Sister,” says Olivia-Ann, “let us not wait for God.”
Whereupon Eunice advances on me with this most peculiar look, her dirty flannel nighty jerking along the floor. And Olivia-Ann leeches after her and Bluebell lets forth this moan that must have been heard clear to Eufala and back while Marge stands there wringing her hands and whimpering.
“Oh-h-h,” sobs Marge, “please give her back that
