Half of Paradise (22 page)

“It’s hard to tell. We was shooting at the same time. Part of him is still sticking to a tree out there.”

“Cover them up and let’s go back,” the captain said.

Evans replaced the tarpaulin. The water ran down from the creases in the canvas onto his boots.

“You goddamn swine,” LeBlanc said. His skin was white and the burn on his forehead turned dark as blood.

“Shut that man up,” the captain said.

“I been having trouble with him ever since you left,” Rainack said. “I started to bust him a couple of times.”

“Can’t you keep control of your men, Evans?” the captain said.

“I’d like to take him off in the woods and not come back with him,” Evans said.

“Sonsofbitches.”

“Do you want to keep shut, or you want something across the mouth?” Evans said.

Spittle drooled over LeBlanc’s chin. He sprang on Evans and grabbed him by the throat. The guard fell backwards in the mud with LeBlanc on top of him. Evans’ mouth opened in a dry gasp and his eyes protruded from his head. LeBlanc’s hands tightened into the soft pink skin. Evans fumbled weakly at his holster for his pistol.

Rainack and the captain hit at LeBlanc’s head with their revolvers, and amid the hard bone-splitting knocks he shouted into Evans’ face, the saliva running from his mouth: “You wouldn’t let me wait I had it planned and you wouldn’t give me time goddamn you to hell if you’d only waited I could have done it right—” and then Rainack whipped his pistol barrel across LeBlanc’s temple, and he fell sideways into a pool of water.

J.P. WINFIELD

The show had returned to town two months after it began its tour of the southern portion of the state. It was night, and a large flatbed truck, painted firecracker-red, followed a black sedan over a railroad crossing down a dirt road into the Negro section of town. At first there were board shacks with dirt yards and outbuildings on each side of the road, then farther on, the road became a blacktop lined with taverns, pool halls, shoeshine parlors, and open-air markets which stank of refuse and dead fish and rotted vegetables. The doors to the taverns and pool halls were opened, and the night was filled with the noise of loud jukeboxes and drunken laughter. Negroes loitered along the sidewalk under the neon bar signs and called back and forth to each other across the street. A hillbilly band stood on the open bed of the truck with their instruments. A boxlike piano was bolted to the bed with its back against the cab. Several wood casks were stacked along the side of the piano. The firecracker-red truck was painted with political slogans in big white letters:

L
ET A
H
UNGRY
M
AN
K
ILL A
R
ABBIT

B
RING
H
ONEST
G
OVERNMENT
B
ACK TO
L
OUISIANA

L
ET THE
G
OOD
C
HURCH
P
EOPLE
H
AVE
T
HEIR
B
INGO
G
AMES

V
OTE FOR
J
IM
L
ATHROP, A
S
LAVE TO
N
O
M
AN AND
A
SERVANT TO
A
LL

T
HE
C
OMMON
M
AN
I
S
K
ING

The sedan and the truck stopped by the taverns. The Negroes on the sidewalk looked at them cautiously. More Negroes appeared in the doorways, and small children ran down the road from the shacks to follow the truck.

“What you want down here?” a Negro said from the sidewalk.

Jim Lathrop got out of the sedan. He was dressed in a light tan suit with a blue sports shirt buttoned at the throat without a tie. He looked at the Negro.

“This is campaign night. Don’t you know this is election time?” he said.

“You ain’t going to get no votes down here,” a woman said.

“How do you know that, sister?” Lathrop said. “How you know you don’t want to vote for me if you haven’t heard what I got to say? How do you know I’m not the only man running for office that can do something for you? Tell me that, sister, and I’ll go on home. Of course you can’t tell me, because you haven’t listened to what I got to say. And that’s why I’m here tonight. You folks don’t have one friend in Baton Rouge and you don’t have many friends in Washington, and I’m down here to tell you how you can get one; I’m here to tell you that there’s one man in this state who is a slave to nobody and a servant to all, and I mean all, no matter if he’s colored or white.”

“You ain’t going to do nothing for us,” a Negro man said.

“You’re wrong, brother. If I get in office you’ll get an even shake. I promise you that. Anyone who ever knew Jim Lathrop will tell you that he takes care of his friends. We got a band tonight and we got plenty to drink. I want you folks to enjoy yourselves while you listen to what I tell you. There’s J.P. Winfield on the truck, star of the Louisiana Jubilee and the Nashville Barn Dance. He’s going to sing you some songs. There’s enough to drink for everybody, so line up at the back of the truck and we’ll get things started.”

No one moved off the sidewalk. Lathrop watched them a minute and went to the truck and took a carton of paper cups from behind the piano and pulled one from the box.

“Bring a cask over here, J.P.,” he said.

J.P. rolled a cask on its bottom to the edge of the truck bed. Lathrop turned on the wood spigot and filled the cup with wine. He drank it empty and crushed the cup in his hand and threw it on the concrete. He filled another and walked to the sidewalk with it.

“I never knew good colored folks to turn down a cup of wine,” he said. “I wouldn’t have bought all them kegs if I’d thought I was going to have to drink it by myself. What about you, brother? You drinking tonight?”

“I drinks any time, morning, noon, or night,” the Negro said.

“See what you can do with this.” Lathrop handed him the cup.

The Negro drank it off, the wine running down his chin and throat into his shirt. He wiped his mouth and laughed loudly.

“I’m one up on you,” he said.

“How’s that?”

“I never registered. I can’t vote.”

Everyone laughed.

“He’s got you there, boss,” someone said. “Ain’t none of us registered. Can’t pass the reading test.”

“Better go on the other side of town and drink your wine. I told you there ain’t no votes down here.”

They were all laughing now.

“I didn’t come down here to make you vote for me,” Lathrop said. “I just want you to listen to me for a little while. If you want to vote and you ain’t registered, by God I’ll take you down to the polls and register you myself. Now go on and line up for some wine. It don’t matter if you vote for me or not; I came here to have some drinking and some singing, and by God we’re going to have it. Sing us a song, J.P., while these people get something to drink.”

The band started playing and J.P. sang the song he had written for Lathrop’s campaign. The Negroes gathered around the back of the truck, and Lathrop left the spigot of the cask open while they passed their cups under it. The cask was soon empty and another was brought up. J.P. sang three more songs, and April and Seth sang one each. The crowd around the truck became larger. Several Negroes were dancing in the street. Their faces were shiny and purple under the neon. The air was heavy with the smell of sweat and cheap wine. The empty casks were thrown into the gutter, and small children tried to stand on their sides and roll them down the street. The people at the back of the truck began to push each other to get their cups under the spigot. Lathrop smashed in the top of the keg and set it in the street. The Negroes dipped their cups through the top into the wine. The keg was drained in a few minutes. A man tried to pick it up and drink the residue from the bottom. He lifted it with both hands and put his mouth to the rim and tilted it upward. The wine poured out over his face and clothes. He laughed and threw the empty keg into the air. It crashed and splintered apart in the middle of the street.

“Police going to be down here.”

“Hush up, woman. Police don’t bother me.”

“You’re going to spend the night in the jailhouse, nigger.”

“Hush yo’ mouth.”

“How’s everybody feeling?” Lathrop said.

“Bring out some more of them barrels.”

“Right here,” Seth said.

He put the keg on the edge of the truck and broke the spigot off with his foot. The wine ran in a stream into the street. The Negroes crowded around with their cups. The wine splashed over their clothes and bodies.

“God, what a smell,” April said. “How long do we have to stay here?”

“Till Lathrop makes his speech and gets tired of playing Abraham Lincoln,” J.P. said.

“The smell is enough to make you sick,” she said.

“Drink some wine with your brothers,” Seth said.

“You’re cute,” she said.

“April don’t like the smell. Tell them to go home and take a bath,” Seth said.

“You’re very cute tonight,” she said.

Lathrop called up to the truck from the street, where he was handing out election leaflets that instructed the reader how to use the voting machine and what lever to push for Lathrop as senator.

“Let’s have some music up there,” he said.

J.P. sang an old Jimmie Rodgers song.

I’m going where the water drinks like cherry wine
Lord Lord

I’m going where the water drinks like cherry wine Because this Louisiana water tastes like turpentine
.

Seth rolled another keg to the edge of the truck bed. Someone grabbed it by the top and pulled it over into the street. A stave broke loose and the wine poured into the gutter. A fight broke out between the man who had tipped over the cask and another man who had been waiting to fill his cup.

Lathrop got up on the truck and motioned for the band to stop playing.

“Here it comes,” April whispered. “God, I hope he makes it quick. I’m getting sick.”

“Now that I met most of you folks I’d like to tell you what I got planned when I get in office,” he began. His tan suit was spotted with wine stains. “You see that dirt road we came up on? When I’m elected we’re not going to have roads like that. No sir, we’re going to have the best streets and highways anywhere. You’re not going to have to sit on your front porch and eat all that dust everytime a car comes down your street. We’re going to get electric lights in the houses and plumbing and running water, and there’s going to be good schools you can send your children to.”

“Lawd-God,” Seth whispered.

“They ought to bring a fire hose out here and wash them down,” April said. “None of them must have bathed since the Civil War.”

“Don’t you like nigger politics?” Seth said.

“And we’re going to have unemployment insurance and social security and charity hospitals for the poor,” Lathrop said. “We’re going to run that bunch of politicians out of the capitol and put the common man back in his rightful place. We’re going to get rid of the fat boys that are draining the state dry and giving nothing to the people; we’re going to raise the wages and the living standard, and the only way to do it is to get this big city trash out of office and let a man of the people serve and represent the people.”

“This is the last time I’m going around kissing niggers for Lathrop,” April said.

“You thinking about quitting?” Seth said. “Doc Elgin ought to give you a job. They say there’s good money in pushing happy powder in the grade schools.”

April turned to him and formed two words with her lips.

“And there’s a lot more benefits coming to the state,” Lathrop said. “For years you been paying taxes to the rich, and the only thing you got for it is hard work and poverty. I’ve seen colored people working in the fields twelve hours a day and not getting enough money to buy bread and greens with; I’ve seen them sweating on highway gangs and railroad and construction jobs and getting nothing but sunstroke for their pay. Well, that’s going to change. Every man in this state is going to have an even chance, and there’s not going to be any rich men walking over the poor—”

His speech went on for another half hour. A police car came down the blacktop and cruised slowly by the crowd. An officer in the front seat waved to Lathrop. Lathrop nodded in return, and the car disappeared down the road. The last cask of wine was emptied, the band put away their instruments, and Lathrop said good night to the crowd. He went among the Negroes and shook a few hands before he got in his sedan and drove back to the other side of town, where he was to make a late speech at a segregationist rally held in a vacant lot under a big tent. The truck followed the sedan past the board shacks and across the railroad crossing.

At the hotel J.P. stopped off in the bar and had a whiskey and water. He had another. He got some change from the bartender and went to use the telephone in the booth. He phoned Doc Elgin at his home.

“You didn’t come around today,” J.P. said.

“I’ve been busy. I asked you not to phone me except at my office,” Elgin said.

“I need some candy.”

“Everybody needs candy.”

“I’m almost out. I’ll need some by tomorrow.”

“I have a lot of people to see,” Elgin said.

“Listen, I need it in the morning.”

“Where will you be?”

“At the hotel.”

“You owe me for the last two deliveries.”

“I’ll make it good tomorrow.”

“I advise you to,” Elgin said, and hung up.

J.P. had a glass of beer and a ham sandwich at the bar and went up to April’s room. Through the door he could hear the shower water running. He went in without knocking and sat in a chair by the window and waited for her. He lifted the shade and looked down into the street. The lamp on the corner burned in the dark. A Negro fruit vender pushed a wood cart along the worn brick paving in the street. The night was quiet except for the creak of the wooden wheels over the brick and the slow shuffle of the Negro.