Half of Paradise (28 page)

This is it, he thought. I ain’t got to go no more.
The wound in my side turns the grass to red
. He saw the troopers come over the rise, silhouetted against the sun. He could see Evans among them, as though he were looking at him through a long tunnel. He could have raised his rifle and shot him, but he knew it would do no good. There would always be another Evans and another after him. Toussaint was very tired.
I wish I could lie in the corn and look up through the stalks
. His head sagged on his chest, and he fell backwards in the leaves with his arms stretched out by his side.

J.P. WINFIELD

He had a morning appointment with the doctor. He took a cab to the doctor’s office and gave his name to the nurse and read the newspapers in the waiting room while she told the doctor he was there. Later the nurse took him into a small white room that had the depressing antiseptic smell of a hospital to it. The doctor came in a few minutes later. He was slight and dark featured and he had a gray mustache and his hair was beginning to thin along his forehead.

“What’s the trouble?” he said.

“I want a checkup.”

“Is it anything in particular?”

“I blacked out a couple of times,” J.P. said.

“Under what circumstances?”

“I just blacked out.”

“Take off your shirt.”

The doctor listened to his heart and breathing with the stethoscope.

“Do a couple of knee bends,” he said.

J.P. did them. The doctor listened some more with the stethoscope.

“Let’s check your blood pressure.”

He wrapped the rubber tourniquet around J.P.’s arm and pumped it up with the rubber ball in his hand.

“It’s high,” he said.

“How much?”

“Considerably more than it should be. Did you know that you had a heart murmur?”

“No.”

“I want to make a cardiograph test.”

“What’s that?”

“It will tell us more about the condition of your heart.”

“How bad is a murmur?”

“It depends. It might mean you have to take things a little easier.”

J.P. put his shirt back on.

“Do you drink excessively?” the doctor said.

“No.”

“Are you taking any kind of drugs?”

“Barbiturates.”

“Nothing else?”

“No.”

“Who prescribed them for you?”

“Another doctor.”

“Why do you need them?”

“I’m a singer. I keep late hours.”

“You’ll have to stop taking them. Your blood pressure is too high.”

“What will happen if I don’t stop?”

“They can put a severe strain on your heart.”

“Can you give me that test now?”

“Tell the nurse to make an appointment for you tomorrow. I can’t give it to you this morning,” he said. “Don’t take any barbiturates today, regardless of whether you have a prescription or not.”

“It’s a habit with me. I can’t get rid of it just like that.”

“You’ll have to unless you want to seriously damage your health.”

It was raining when J.P. returned the next afternoon. The sky was yellow from the rain, and the trees along the street were wet and very green. He went into the office and put his hat and raincoat on the rack. He went into the small white room and lay on the table while the doctor put the recorders on his chest. When the test was over the nurse came in and removed them. She and the doctor left the room. J.P. dressed and sat on the table. He looked out the window and saw the rain falling on the street out of the yellow sky. There was a magnolia tree in the yard by the side of the building, and the white petals of its flowers were scattered on the grass. The doctor came back in and closed the door behind him.

“I can’t tell you much more than I told you yesterday,” he said. “The murmur isn’t a bad one, but you will have to be careful.”

“About them barbiturates. I been taking them a long while. It ain’t easy to stop right off.”

“You might try a withdrawal period.”

“Ain’t there a treatment to let you down easy?”

“Is it only barbiturates you’re worried about?”

“I done told you.”

“You should commit yourself to a hospital if you’re addicted to anything stronger.”

“I ain’t taking nothing else.”

“I could get you into a private hospital.”

“Listen. You’re supposed to help my heart.”

“There’s nothing to do for a murmur. I can only tell you not to put a strain on yourself. Will you let me contact a friend of mine who treats narcotic cases?”

“No,” J.P. said.

“Then good day, sir.”

J.P. left the office and walked out on the street in the rain. He caught a taxi and rode back to the hotel. He listened to the tires roll along the wet concrete. He thought about what April had told him of her hospital cure. Six months to a year in a small room without any furniture except a bed that was bolted to the floor, and the shock treatments when they turn the high-pressure hoses on you or strap you to a table and run an electric current through your body, and when they gradually reduce your dosage of narcotics and then one day shut you off completely and you start the nightmares and your nose runs and you get sick if someone talks of food and everything inside you goes crack like a broken plate. Then someday you would get out and think you were clean, and like April you would be on it again in a couple of weeks. He couldn’t do it, he thought. It was too much. The taxi arrived at the hotel. He stepped out on the curb and stood under the colonnade out of the rain and paid the driver through the window. A year of treatment and it would start all over. He couldn’t beat it, and that was the end of that.

A week later was election day. Lathrop’s ticket won the Democratic primary by the largest majority in the state’s history, and the opposition was considered fortunate to have taken four parishes in the southern part of the state since it took none in the north. J.P. was at the hotel that evening, and April, Seth, and Hunnicut were listening to the returns over the radio in the next room. Seth opened the door that joined the two rooms. He had a glass of bourbon in his hand, and his face was red. He came over to the bed where J.P. was resting and put his hand on J.P.’s arm.

“Abraham Lincoln took the state,” he said.

“I ain’t interested,” J.P. said, opening his eyes.

“A bonus and free nigger pussy for us all.”

“Pour me a drink. There’s a glass on the table.”

Seth went to the other room and brought his bottle back. He clinked the lip of it on the glass and poured.

“I’m going to get me a big redheaded nigger woman,” he said.

J.P. sat up in bed and took the drink. He put on his shoes, leaving the strings untied, and went over to the ice pitcher on the dresser and poured some water in the glass.

“Mr. Lincoln has promised free nigger pussy to all white male voters,” Seth said.

“Did the sonofabitch really take the whole state?”

“He missed it by four parishes.”

“Is J.P. up?” April said from the next room.

“He ran off with a nigger woman,” Seth said.

“You’re very cute,” she said, still in the other room.

“He was with one of them big redheaded ones.”

“Why don’t you go somewhere else?” she said, now standing in the doorway.

“Your wife don’t want me, J.P.”

“Let it alone,” he said.

“Have a drink with us,” Seth said.

“Please leave,” she said.

“Sit down and drink some of Lathrop’s bourbon.”

“Tell him to leave,” she said to J.P.

“I offered her a drink.”

“You’re a drunk pig,” she said.

“My, my.”

“Tell him to get out, J.P.”

“Tell him yourself.”

“Both of you make me sick,” she said.

“You better go, Seth.”

Seth went to the door and toasted them with his glass.

“Peace be with you, my children.”

April shut the door after him and put on the latch chain.

“I can’t stand that ass,” she said.

“Do you have any whiskey?”

“No.”

He called down to the bar for a bottle. A few minutes later a Negro porter knocked on the door. J.P. took the bottle and tipped him.

“Are you going to sit around and drink all night?” she said.

“For a while.”

“I’m sick of this place. Take me to a movie.”

“I’m leaving town in an hour,” he said.

“What?”

“I’m going back home for a few days.”

“What in the world for?”

“I ain’t been there since I went to work for Hunnicut.”

“I’m not going to stay here by myself.”

“Do what you like.”

“I’ll go with you,” she said.

“You wouldn’t enjoy it.”

“I’m sick of this hotel.”

“Hunnicut will take you to a movie.”

“It’s not fair to go off and leave me alone. You didn’t even tell me.”

“I’m going to pack my bag,” he said.

He opened his suitcase on the bed and took some clean shirts out of the dresser drawer.

“Damn you,” she said.

“Let’s don’t have no arguments tonight.”

“You have to be back for the show Saturday.”

“I’ll be here.”

“I’m going with you. Anything is better than staying here.”

“It’s a little hick town south of the Arkansas line, and you’d be ready to leave five minutes after you was there.”

He wrapped the bottle of bourbon in a soft shirt and put it in the suitcase. He phoned the desk clerk and told him to send up the porter. The Negro came in and took the suitcase out.

“I got to go now,” J.P. said.

“Don’t you want to stay and do something nice?”

“Goodbye.”

He carried his guitar with him in its gray felt cover and caught the nine o’clock train at the depot. It was an old train that pulled mostly freight to a few towns along the state line; it carried only two passenger cars hitched to the rear before the caboose. He sat in the front car in one of the leather seats, and felt the train jolt under him and the couplings bang as it moved out of the station past the lighted platform and baggage wagons and into the yards through the maze of tracks and the green and red signal lamps on the switches, and on past where other trains were pulled off on the sidings and the water tower and the board shacks with their roofs blackened by the passing locomotives. He looked out the window into the dark and saw the lighted glow of the city against the sky far behind him.

There were just a few people in his car. He took his suitcase off the rack and went into the men’s room. A gandy-walker was sleeping on the seat by the window. He wore overalls and heavy work shoes and a trainman’s cap. There was a lunch pail by his foot. He had a faded bandanna tucked into the bib of his overalls. He slept with his mouth partly open, and his face was unshaved and sunburned. J.P. opened his suitcase and took out the bottle. He mixed a drink with water in a paper cup. The gandy-walker woke up and went to the basin to wash his face. He sat back down and took a sandwich from his lunchpail and began eating. J.P. asked him if he wanted a drink.

“Yeah buddy,” he said.

He unscrewed the top from his coffee thermos and held it out for J.P. to pour.

“Have a sandwich,” he said.

“No, thanks.”

“Go ahead. My old lady makes up more than I can eat.”

J.P. took the sandwich. It was a piece of cold steak between bread.

The trainman was eating and drinking and talking at the same time.

“You’re the fellow that got on with the guitar I seen you on the platform,” he said. “Go get it and let’s play a tune.”

“It’ll wake up the people in the car.”

“We can go out in the vestibule. It ain’t going to bother nobody.”

“You want another drink?”

He held out the red thermos top while J.P. poured.

“Go get the guitar. I play a little bit myself.”

“All right.” J.P. pushed aside the curtain that hung over the door of the men’s room and went back into the car. The lights were down, and the few people in the car were sleeping. He took the guitar off the rack and unzipped its cloth cover. He put the cover on the seat and went back to the men’s room.

“You don’t mind, do you?” the trainman said. “I’d like to hear some music before I get off at the next town.”

J.P. got his bottle, and he and the trainman went out to the vestibule. The area between the two cars swayed back and forth with the motion of the train. They could hear the wheels clicking loudly on the tracks. The door windows had no glass in them, and the wind was cool and smelled of the farmland. They could see the fields of corn and cotton in the night under the moon, and a pinewoods that stretched over the hills into the dark green of the meadows.

“Play if you want to,” J.P. said, handing him the guitar.

“You sure you don’t mind? Some fellows don’t like other people picking their guitar.”

“Help yourself.”

“You know ‘Brakeman’s Blues’?”

“Play it.”

The gandy-walker held the fingers of his left hand tight on the strings and frets and strummed with the thumb and index finger of his other hand. He propped his leg on the metal stool that the conductor used to help passengers off, and rested the guitar across his thigh.

I’ll eat my breakfast heah
,

Get my dinner in New Or-leans

(
Right on down through Birmingham
)

I’m going to get me a mama

Lord I ain’t never seen
.

I went to the depot

And looked up on the board
,

It said there’re good times heah

But it’s better on down the road
.

He played quite well. J.P. listened and drank out of the bottle. Through the window he could see the black-green of the pines spread over the hills and the moon low in the sky and there was a river winding out of the woods across a field and he saw the moonlight reflecting on the water.

Where was you, mama
,