TC: New York, mostly.
JUANITA QUINN: We used to go to New York every year or two. The Rainbow Room: now there’s a view. But it wouldn’t be any fun now. Nothing is. My husband says you’re an old friend of Jake Pepper’s.
TC: I’ve known him ten years.
JUANITA QUINN: Why does he suppose my husband has any connection with this thing?
TC: Thing?
JUANITA QUINN (amazed): You must have heard about it. Well, why does Jake Pepper think my husband’s involved?
TC: Does Jake think your husband’s involved?
JUANITA QUINN: That’s what some people say. My sister told me—
TC: But what do you think?
JUANITA QUINN (lifting her Chihuahua and cuddling him against her bosom): I feel sorry for Jake. He must be lonely. And he’s mistaken; there’s nothing here. It all ought to be forgotten. He ought to go home. (Eyes closed utterly weary) Ah well, who knows? Or cares? Not I. Not I, said the Spider to the Fly. Not I.
Beyond us, there was a commotion at the chess table. Quinn, celebrating a victory over Jake, vociferously congratulated himself: “Sonofagun! Thought you had me trapped there. But the moment you moved your queen—it’s hot beer and horse piss for the Great Pepper!” His hoarse baritone rang through the vaulted room with the brio of an opera star. “Now you, young man,” he shouted at me. “I need a game. A bona fide challenge. Old Pepper here ain’t fit to lick my boots.” I started to excuse myself, for the prospect of a chess game with Quinn was both intimidating and tiresome; I might have felt differently if I’d thought I could beat him, triumphantly invade that citadel of conceit.
I had once won a prep-school chess championship, but that was eons ago; my knowledge of the game had long been stored in a mental attic. However, when Jake beckoned, stood up, and offered me his chair, I acquiesced, and leaving Juanita Quinn to the silent flickerings of her television screen, seated myself opposite her husband; Jake stood behind my chair, an encouraging presence. But Quinn, assessing my faltering manner, the indecision of my first moves, dismissed me as a walkover, and resumed a conversation he’d been having with Jake, apparently concerning cameras and photography.
QUINN: The Krauts are good. I’ve always used Kraut cameras. Leica. Rolleiflex. But the Japs are whippin’ their ass. I bought a new Jap number, no bigger than a deck of cards, that will take five hundred pictures on a single roll of film.
TC: I know that camera. I’ve worked with a lot of photographers and I’ve seen some of them use it. Richard Avedon has one. He says it’s no good.
QUINN: To tell the truth, I haven’t tried mine yet. I hope your friend’s wrong. I could’ve bought a prize bull for what that doodad set me back.
(I suddenly felt Jake’s fingers urgently squeezing my shoulder, which I interpreted as a message that he wished me to pursue the subject.)
TC: Is that your hobby—photography?
QUINN: Oh, it comes and goes. Fits and starts. How I started was, I got tired of paying so-called professionals to take pictures of my prize cattle. Pictures I need to send round to different breeders and buyers. I figured I could do just as good, and save myself a nickel to boot.
(Jake’s fingers goaded me again.)
TC: Do you make many portraits?
QUINN: Portraits?
TC: Of people.
QUINN (scoffingly): I wouldn’t call them portraits. Snapshots, maybe. Aside from cattle, mostly I do nature pictures. Landscapes. Thunderstorms. The seasons here on the ranch. The wheat when it’s green and then when it’s gold. My river—I’ve got some dandy pictures of my river in full flood.
(The river. I tensed as I heard Jake clear his throat, as though he were about to speak; instead, his fingers prodded me even more firmly. I toyed with a pawn, stalling.)
TC: Then you must shoot a lot of color.
QUINN (nodding): That’s why I do my own developing. When you send your stuff off to those laboratories, you never know what the hell you’re gonna get back.
TC: Oh, you have a darkroom?
QUINN: If you want to call it that. Nothing fancy.
(Once more Jake’s throat rumbled, this time with serious intent.)
JAKE: Bob? You remember the pictures I told you about? The coffin pictures. They were made with a fast-action camera.
QUINN: (Silence)
JAKE: A Leica.
QUINN: Well, it wasn’t mine. My old Leica got lost in darkest Africa. Some nigger stole it. (Staring at the chessboard, his face suffused with a look of amused dismay) Why, you little rascal! Damn your hide. Look here, Jake. Your friend almost has me checkmated. Almost …
It was true; with a skill subconsciously resurrected, I had been marching my ebony army with considerable, though unwitting, competence, and had indeed managed to maneuver Quinn’s king into a perilous position. In one sense I regretted my success, for Quinn was using it to divert the angle of Jake’s inquiry, to revert from the suddenly sensitive topic of photography back to chess; on the other hand, I was elated—by playing flawlessly, I might now very well win. Quinn scratched his chin, his gray eyes dedicated to the religious task of rescuing his king. But for me the chessboard had blurred; my mind was snared in a time warp, numbed by memories dormant almost half a century.
It was summer, and I was five years old, living with relatives in a small Alabama town. There was a river attached to this town, too; a sluggish muddy river that repelled me, for it was full of water moccasins and whiskered catfish. However, much as I disliked their ferocious snouts, I was fond of captured catfish, fried and dripping with ketchup; we had a cook who served them often. Her name was Lucy Joy, though I’ve seldom known a less joyous human. She was a hefty black woman, reserved, very serious; she seemed to live from Sunday to Sunday, when she sang in the choir of some pineywoods church. But one day a remarkable change came over Lucy Joy.
While I was alone with her in the kitchen she began talking to me about a certain Reverend Bobby Joe Snow, describing him with an excitement that kindled my own imagination: he was a miracle-maker, a famous evangelist, and he was traveling soon to this very town; the Reverend Snow was due here next week, come to preach, to baptize and save souls! I pleaded with Lucy to take me to see him, and she smiled and promised she would.
The fact was, it was necessary that I accompany her. For the Reverend Snow was a white man, his audiences were segregated, and Lucy had figured it out that the only way she would be welcome was if she brought along a little white boy to be baptized. Naturally, Lucy did not let on that such an event was in store for me. The following week, when we set off to attend the Reverend’s camp meeting, I only envisioned the drama of watching a holy man sent from heaven to help the blind see and the lame walk.
But I began to feel uneasy when I realized we were headed toward the river; when we got there and I saw hundreds of people gathered along the bank, country people, backwoods white trash stomping and hollering, I hesitated. Lucy was furious—she pulled me into the sweltering mob. Jingling bells, cavorting bodies; I could hear one voice above the others, a chanting booming baritone. Lucy chanted, too; moaned, shook.
Magically, a stranger hoisted me onto his shoulder and I got a quick view of the man with the dominant voice. He was planted in the river with water up to his white-robed waist; his hair was gray and white, a drenched tangled mass, and his long hands, stretched skyward, implored the humid noon sun. I tried to see his face, for I knew this must be the Reverend Bobby Joe Snow, but before I could, my benefactor dropped me back into the disgusting confusion of ecstatic feet, undulating arms, trembling tambourines. I begged to go home; but Lucy, drunk with glory, held me close.
The sun churned; I tasted vomit in my throat. But I didn’t throw up; instead, I started to yell and punch and scream: Lucy was pulling me toward the river, and the crowd parted to create a path for us. I struggled until we reached the river’s bank; then stopped, silenced by the scene. The white-robed man standing in the river was holding a reclining young girl; he recited biblical scripture before rapidly immersing her underwater, then swooping her up again: shrieking, weeping, she stumbled to shore. Now the Reverend’s simian arms reached for me.
I bit Lucy’s hand, fought free of her grip. But a redneck boy grabbed me and dragged me into the water. I shut my eyes; I smelled the Jesus hair, felt the Reverend’s arms carrying me downward into drowning blackness, then hours later lifting me into sunlight. My eyes, opening, looked into his gray, manic eyes. His face, broad but gaunt, moved closer, and he kissed my lips. I heard a loud laugh, an eruption like gunfire: “Checkmate!”
QUINN: Checkmate!
JAKE: Hell, Bob. He was just
