Maude Brown's Baby (2 page)

“No, I’d be a photographer right off, and in a year or two I could be writing some of the stories. Jake’s going to ask his editor about that.”             

“Donny, I’ll swear yo
u trust that man more than I do, and a lot more than you ought to yourself. A rent house and room to yourself all the way downtown? Jake’s filling your head with ideas. Besides, none of that matters if you’re in the Army.”

“I know.”

Naomi picked the bacon from the pan, turned down the burner and wiped the stove with a rag. She poured half the grease into an empty coffee tin, leaving the rest to fry the eggs. Donald kept quiet, but felt the muscles at the back of his neck growing tense. Naomi wasn’t done with her advice.

“It’s one thing for him to help Elto
n,” she said. “He certainly needs it, but you should know better. Jake just wants somebody to pay the rent on that place he bought.”

Donald tipped his head forward and kneaded his neck muscles with both hands. He’d heard all her arguments before.

“Neck bothering you again?”

“No
.”

“You’ve been doing that a lot lately.”

“I’m all right.”

“You need some Ben-Gay?”

“No, Ma. What were you saying about Jake?”

“That
rent house. What’s he going to charge you, anyway? And come to think of it, where’d he get the money to pay down? Jake’s just a newspaper photographer. He can’t earn that much. How old is he, twenty-four? Twenty-five? He never studied business. You said yourself he’s not a great photographer. All he’s good at is finding lady friends. Who in their right mind would loan that glad-hand money to buy a house?”

Her last question caught him off guard. He raised his head, leaving one hand on the back of his neck.
Jake never said where he got his money, and Donald never thought to ask.

“Ja
ke wants ten dollars a month, but I can make fifty at the paper as a photographer. The office is two blocks away, so I won’t even have to take the trolley to work.”

Naomi cracked an egg harder than she meant to on the edge of the frying pan. Half of it fell on the stove. “You can stay here for free, you
know, and Clarence can use your help.”

“I know, Ma.”

“Think about it, Donny.”

“But the Army…”

“Jake’s right. You won’t be drafted. Just be thankful they won’t take you, not with your bad eyes.”

Inhale … hold … exhale … His eyes weren’t bad,
just different. Donald kneaded his neck, rolled his head, straightened his back and answered Naomi.

“Maybe so
. Either way, I need to move on. If I don’t pass the draft physical, then I’ll take the job.”

“Fifty dollars sounds like a lot jus’ for takin’ pictures,” Clarence said, tugging his suspenders and dropping with a grunt into his chair by the window. He left his gimpy leg straight under the table.

“Morning, Pa.”

Clarence took his time spreading the Sunday
Chronicle
on the kitchen table, sweeping both hands wide to flatten the pages. He tilted his head back, squinting down the bridge of his nose.

“S
ays here this cool front’s goin' to stay a few days. ‘Bout time.” Clarence consulted the headlines, tracing two fingers down the page. War stories mostly, and two about the draft. He looked toward Naomi, but held quiet on the news. He asked instead about Donald’s new job.

“An’ what happens whe
n you fellows run short of stuff to foe-tow-graph?” Clarence loved drawing out the word. Donald laughed as he poured coffee into a battered pair of blue enameled mugs. He set one in front of Clarence and kept the other for himself. Naomi already had her fancy bone china cup on the counter by the sink.

“That’s not my concern, Pa. I just worry about getting it all in. Mr. Foster keeps his photographers pretty busy.
Besides, the newspaper is short-handed with so many boys fighting overseas….” Donald bit his tongue. “Sorry.”

“Me too,” Clarence said, glancing at Naomi’s back as she worked at the stove. He slid the sugar bowl next to his coffee
cup and added two large spoonfuls.

“Only one, Papa,” Naomi called without turning around. Clarence
looked up from his coffee cup to Donald, shaking his head.

“That woman has eyes at the back of her head.”

“I just know you, old man,” Naomi said, still facing the stove, one hand on her hip as she flipped the eggs.

Clarence added a third spoonful of sugar and second splash of cream, then made a point of stirring noisily until the sugar dissolved. “You’re the boss,” he called to his wife.

Donald added one sugar and a bit of cream, then listened thoughtfully as his spoon clanked against the metal cup. “How long have you had these, Pa?”

“Them cups? They was the first things I remember buyin’ when we come here from Galveston after the Great Storm.” Clarence raised his voice so Naomi could hear. “Remember, Mama? That feed store over on Washington had ‘em two for a nickel. We bought three plates to match
and three knives, forks and spoons. They was all the dishes we had for more than a year.”

Naomi turned back toward Donald. “Today is the day, isn’t it, when you pull out that
old photograph and the doctor’s letter?”

“I did it this morning, Ma.”

“Donny, them times is done,” Clarence offered. “You’ve got to let it go and move on. You do this ever’ year an’ all it does is make you sad for a week.”

“I’m trying, Pa.”

Donald stirred until a vortex formed, then reversed to set his coffee swirling
in the opposite direction. He licked the spoon dry and set it on the table with a click.

“So
now you’re takin’ advice from Jake Miller?” Clarence said, steering the conversation back to Naomi’s original tone. He licked his own spoon front and back. “Thought you’d want to be shed of him by now.”

“Jake’s all right, Pa
. I know he’s annoying, but he’s taught me a lot.”

“Didn’t he get all the credit for that picture you took when the ship channel opened?”

“That was four years ago, Pa. Jake was with the dignitaries, so I got the shot when that drunken senator fell in the water.”

“And Jake told the editor the picture was his,” Naomi said from across the room.

“It was his, Ma, sort of. He gave me the film that morning and had it developed soon as we got back. I wasn’t even sure I got the shot until I saw it in the paper.”

“But didn’t Jake tell Mr. Foley he took it himself?”

“He had to, Ma. With a half-dozen news photographers around, how would it look if some kid took the best shot of the day? What would his editor say?”

“I say you was cheated,” Clarence said, “jus’ like
you was cheated with your first camera. That pawn shop owner took your six dollars slick enough, but forgot to mention the camera was busted. You spent all summer earnin’ the money.”

Donald thought o
f it often. Jake wanted to force the pawnbroker to refund the sale. Donald wouldn’t let him, but it felt good to know Jake would stand up for him.

Clarence laughed. “But t
hen you showed us all what for,” he said, rapping his knuckles on the table. “You took the darn thing apart and used them close eyes of yours to find out what was broke. I sure as hell couldn’t see it, but you did. By the time you finished, that old Kodak worked better ‘n new. Wished I could’ve seen Jake’s face when you showed him.”

Yes, that was fun, Donald thought. When Jake saw the pictures Donald made he was speechless, and anything that made Jake Miller speechless was impressive.
             

At the stove, Naomi shook her head.
“You boys want some eggs?”

Jake’s new electric K
laxon sounded just as Donald was helping clear the breakfast dishes. Bosco and three other dogs chimed in when Jake hit the horn twice more. Donald’s jaws grew tight. In the last year, his boyhood hero had changed. Donald still defended Jake to Naomi and Clarence, but he wasn’t sure why.

Clarence walked to the screen door and looked out. “Well, I’ll go see what his lordship wants while you help your ma with the dishes.” Truth was, Clarence liked Jake, but he couldn’t let it show around his wife. He stepped onto the back porch to quiet the dog, then limped down the path toward Jake’s car.

Two minutes later,
Donald set the last of the dishes in the sink.

“Here you go, Ma.”

“Thanks.
You run on now.”

Donald paused
as Naomi scraped leftovers onto the old cookie sheet she used to feed the chickens. She’d toss them table scraps while the dishes soaked. Later, Clarence would wash while Naomi dried. She’d put everything back in the cupboard, upside-down glasses on the left, plates right, silverware in the drawer with the spoons and forks in neat stacks, while Clarence cleaned the stove.               Always the same.

That’s it! Donald almost said out loud.

He knew what they were going to do today, tomorrow and next week, but Jake was likely as not to conjure something Donald never considered, like the time he talked that circus owner into letting Donald and Elton sit on the elephant, or when he snuck the three of them into the Rice Hotel to see Thomas Edison. Whatever Jake’s reason for stopping by, Donald wanted to be part of it. He tugged on the bill of his cap.

“Bye, Ma.”

“You’re going with Jake?”

“Y
eah. He’s probably headed for the newspaper office.”

“Well, you just behave yourselves,” Naomi said as she dumped the last of th
e scraps onto the cookie sheet.

She always said that.

“W
hat’s up?” Donald called to Jake and Clarence from the back gate. The air was fresh and unusually dry for Houston, with dozens of small clouds drifting across the morning sky like tufts of fresh-picked cotton.

Clarence had a foot on the running board and an elbow atop the hinge of the Model T’s folding windshield. He raised one hand to shade his eyes as he turned toward Donald.

“We was jus’ discussin’ the baseball game. Jake won himself five dollars from some boys at the paper, and now he’s goin’ to collect.” Clarence winked at Donald and poked a thumb toward Jake. “Bet against this man and you’ll lose your shirt!”

Jake tilted his head toward Clarence, who slapped his own knee and laughed. Donald couldn’t hear the joke over the noisy engine, which Jake had left running so he wouldn’t have to crank start it again.

Jake stood
three inches taller than Clarence and weighed forty pounds more. The weight had served him well in his high school football days.

Glancing toward the house
, Jake slowly crossed his arms. He saw Naomi first when she appeared on the back porch. The wooden screen door slapped shut behind her, and Donald and Clarence turned at the sound. She took the steps slower than she used to, right hand braced against the side of the house, the other holding a cookie sheet to her hip.

The chickens came, flapping and squawking loud en
ough to drown the noise of Jake’s car. Dust and loose feathers rolled behind them in the air.

“What foolishness are you discussing now?” Naomi called across the yard. At her feet, fat white birds pecked furiously at each other and the morsels she tossed their way.

Donald smiled. He knew his ma considered chickens dumb as fence posts, but she respected their ability to turn garbage into eggs.

“Hello Naomi,” Jake called, “y
ou get prettier each day.”

“Save that for your lady friends,” she
called back.

“I thought you were my lady friend,” Jake replied. Naomi laughed, unconsciously patting her hair.

Donald studied his friend. Jake’s smile stretched thin and hard across his face, and stubble remained on his cheeks and chin.

Jake
caught Donald’s eye and nodded, but didn’t speak. The look meant, “let’s go.”

Jake
patted Clarence on the shoulder as he walked around to the driver’s side. Clarence grinned in return and stepped back toward the gate.

“Get in!” Jake called over the growing ratt
le of the four-cylinder engine. Donald had barely lifted his boot from the running board when Jake took off, dropping him hard into the horsehair-padded seat. The Model T’s little door slammed shut by itself.

In an instant, Jake’
s good mood was gone.             

“What’s wrong?” Donald said, just as the car’s wood-spoke wheels bounced over a deep rut, banging his knee against the dashboard.
Jakes’ hands gripped the wheel as if that alone would move the little Ford any faster.

“C
ome on, Jake, slow down!”

“Elton,” he shouted over the engine, then lowering his voice, “He’s missing.” Donald braced one hand against the firewall and used the other to keep his cap from blowing off.

“Elton? What happened?”