You an’ Miz G. runnin’ a game on me an’ Ol’ Hunt.’
‘Shit!’ Zeke waved. ‘Mosatime you ain’ here an’ Hunt could be eatin’ cobras an’ drinkin’ elephant piss fo’ all he know. May as well have chicken an’ dumplin’s since I lak ’um.’
‘Naw,’ Earl laughed. ‘That ain’ it. Tell me, man, whuss happ’nin’ wit’yo’ kitchen thing?’
Zeke played the game. He looked both ways down the narrow hall and then lowered his voice in a conspiratorial tone. ‘I shouldn’ be tellin’,’ he admitted, ‘but since you an’ me s’pose to be boys … I, uh, sneaks down to the galley wit’ Miz G. every other day o’ so an’ we gits high on Barracuda wine. Then I starts talkin’ ’bout hi’ I been all over the worl’ an’ still ain’ dug nothin that tastes as good t’me as her chicken an’ dumplin’s. Jus’ lak that they out there on the table. Same as when you talk ’bout banana puddin’.’
‘Without the Barracuda wine.’
‘Wit’out that.’
Earl laughed aloud. Zeke maintained a straight face somehow, but the thought of Mrs Gilliam drinking anything stronger than iced tea was too much for him. Zeke was notorious for drinking anything that could be classified as liquid and Earl had often met the handyman at O’Jay’s, a local bar, but Mrs Gilliam? A pillar of Mt Moriah? Sacri-lege!
‘We love dem grapes!’ Zeke said as Earl scurried down the stairs.
‘Right!’
Zeke was a good man as far as Earl was concerned. The older man had never had a family or a real home until Mrs Gilliam had started renting rooms. There was nothing that could be described as his real profession either. He mowed lawns or shoveled snow or worked on cars at Ike’s garage and come the first of every month he always had his rent money and he rarely missed a night at O’Jay’s. At forty-five he was a slightly built, balding man with a coffee complexion and a contagious sense of humor.
Mrs Gilliam was stirring the evening stew when Earl rushed through the kitchen with a quick ‘Good evening.’ He was halfway to the back door when she stopped him.
‘Where might you think you goin’ this evenin’ befo’ you eat yo’ dinner?’ she asked indignantly.
‘I got a meetin’ to go to,’ he said. ‘It jus’ came up.’
Mrs Gilliam looked at him fondly for a second. With purpose she clamped the lid down on the stew pot and wiped her hands on the red trim apron. She took Earl by the arm and led him to the kitchen table where she sat him down.
‘Let me tell you something,’ she began. ‘I’ve been in Sutton a long time. A long time to realize certain things. When I got here Sutton University was sittin’ right where it is today. My husban’ went to Sutton fo’ a year at night … why you runnin’ yo’sef into a fit fo’ them? They ain’ never been organized. Why you think you got to do so much to organize ’um? Why you got to be there every blessed minnit? No, I take that back. You ain’ over there half as much as my daughter was. Laurie was there all day an’ wuzn’ no studen’ … how she got away wit’out havin’ one a them men’s babies is still beyon’ me. Go on, chile, do what you think you got to do.’
Earl nodded constantly during her monologue as though he understood all of the things that she was trying to say. But as he reached the porch he was more sure than ever that he didn’t understand her and he wanted to go back and tell her to talk, say everything that was on her mind.
‘Earl,’ she called, ‘I don’ wanna hear you ramblin’ ’roun’ in my kitchen at no thousan’ o’clock like las’ night. I know you gon’ be wantin’ some a this somethin’ t’eat, but you can’ have it so if you don’ git it na you won’ have it.’
‘Yes ma’am, I hear you,’ he said.
Zeke heard Earl leaving as he came down to the kitchen. Mrs Gilliam still sat resting her elbows on the kitchen table as though she was tired. It was always a strain for her to deal with her youngest tenant. He never seemed to think twice before agreeing to skip a meal to attend something on campus. She personally didn’t understand why so many meetings demanded his presence.
‘Earl ain’ eatin’ again,’ Zeke surmised.
‘That boy gonna run hisself to death,’ the landlady commented getting up and walking back over to the stew pot.
Outside, Sutton was just feeling the first kisses of autumn. The wind was a baby chick wiggling inside an egg beneath its mother. Evening came gliding down early to chase the sun and bring in Father Night with a blanket of black air to cloak the dying leaves. Though not a moment had passed since Earl’s hasty exit, both Zeke and Mrs Gilliam heard the footsteps on the back porch. Earl reentered the room allowing the screen door to slam behind him.
‘Uh, it’s not too cold now, but I think I’m gonna need my coat later,’ he announced looking around. ‘Uh, where is it?’
Zeke smiled and Mrs Gilliam put on her sternest face.
‘Iss hangin’ in the hall closet, but I oughta not let’choo have it ’cause it was layin’ ’cross the kitchen table when I got up this mornin’. You mussa lef’ it here when you sneaked in las’ night tryin’ t’git somethin’ t’eat … I’m tellin’ you Zeke, ain’ he somethin’?’ They exchanged glances. Earl smiled.
Earl grabbed his jacket off the hook in the hall closet and went back outside. His car was parked and the motor hummed a throaty tune. The night held a tingle of expectation. When Earl thought about the things that lay ahead for him there was a feathery tickle in his stomach. The sidewalk yawned up at him. The lawn was speckled with leaves of a thousand shades, dead or dying. At the side of the house Earl spotted Old Man Hunt pawing the ground with a toothless yard rake. They exchanged waves.
Earl’s car was a ’64 Oldsmobile; a gift from his father two summers past. It had been just the sort of thing he had come to expect from his father. The car had been in an accident and the left side had been caved in near the driver’s door. The owner had been asking three hundred dollars for it, but after a brief conversation with John Arthur Thomas he had been willing to let it go for half that price. The elder Thomas said nothing about the purchase to his son, but kept the car parked in a garage and presented it to his son as a going-away present after Earl’s graduation from the two-year Community College.
‘It ain’ but a small thing,’ John Arthur Thomas declared struggling for words. ‘It ain’ like what I really want you to have, but I knew you wuz gon’ need a car to git around in.’
There was a stiff handshake and a rugged smile from the older man. Everything had been warm but awkward, sincere and yet limited. Earl had wanted to ask if his father had talked to his mother or seen her but had been afraid. The subject was a sore point; a constantly aching tooth that one became used to after awhile.
When he had been fifteen and his mother and father had been apart for almost a year, Earl had asked his father outright why the couple didn’t live together any more.
‘Yo’ mama’s a good woman,’ John Thomas had said softly. ‘She a independent woman by nature, but I convinced her when we wuz seein’ each other that she could depend on me an’ be a woman for a while. I knew that wuz what she wanned to be. But I wasn’t a good provider for her.
