South Street (3 page)

“Nope,” said Leo, looking up at her fat face from below the bar, where he was bent over, connecting a fresh keg to one of the taps.

“I ast him who was he an’ he said he don’t know, did I ever see him before?”

“Ha,” said Leo, bending back to the keg.

“You beats everything, you know it?” said Big Betsy, slamming her fist into the young man’s shoulder and almost knocking him off the stool. “You beats hell outa everything. Hey, Leo, he’s buyin’ me another drink. Get off your knees an’ gimme another shot.”

“Shut up a minute, willya, Betsy,” said Leo, without looking up. He grimaced as he felt for the connection.

“Haw, haw, haw,” laughed Big Betsy. “Didja hear that?” she said to the young man. She suddenly looked old and worn out and very ugly. “Leo, you black bastard, I wants a drink. You quit suckin’ yourself off down there an’ get me one.”

Leo straightened up to his full six two and shoved out his jaw. “In a minute,” he said.

Betsy was about to open her mouth when the young man reached over and laid his hand on her arm. “Take it easy. He’s getting it.”

“Fuckin’ A, he’s gettin’ it,” grumbled Big Betsy. “He just better be gettin’ it.” She scowled fiercely. Leo looked at her with distaste. He bent down again and completed the connection, stood up, tested the tap, then poured her shot glass full, looked at her, glared at the young man. “Thanks, Leo,” said Big Betsy mildly.

“Shit,” said Leo.

“Hey, barkeep,” said a voice at the far end of the bar.

Leo looked up, quickly concealing a frown. “What can I do for you, Leroy?”

“Mr. Briggs,” said a fat, dark-chocolate-skinned man. He was wearing a bottle-green suit and a pink wide-collared shirt with a matching tie and highly polished black boots. His eyes were protected from the bar’s dim light by heavy dark glasses.

Big Betsy gave her companion a gentle nudge that could have broken ribs. “Niggers is all alike,” she said. “They think they’re big shit if they sits around all day like a white man an’ has folks linin’ up to kiss their ass, an’ at night they comes around, all dressed up like it was Halloween, to shit on all the other niggers. They don’t get to be mister until they done had a pint a gin.”

“What you mumblin’ around about down there, piglady?” said Leroy.

“Nothin’,” said Big Betsy sullenly.

“Yeah, well, it better be nothin’.”

Big Betsy kept her mouth shut, but her cheeks puffed out and her eyes were fixed straight ahead. Leroy watched her for a minute. “Gimme a couple sixes,” he said to Leo out of the corner of his mouth.

“Hey, Leroy,” somebody called out of the darkness. “What you got out there in that car?”

Leroy shifted his glance into the darkness and smiled broadly, showing gold-filled teeth. “Oh, just a couple ladies wanted to do a little ridin’, take in the evenin’ air, you know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” mumbled Big Betsy, “so how come you don’t bring ’em in?”

Leroy glared at her. “I said they was ladies, not fat-assed old bar bait.”

Leo set two six-packs of beer on the bar, one on top of the other, slipped a paper bag over the stack, grasped the bag at the bottom and flipped the whole thing over with a snap, rolled the top of the bag down, opened his mouth, and froze into immobility, unable to believe his ears.

“What’s that mean?” Betsy’s young man was saying, without looking up from his scotch. “They cost more’n two dollars?”

“Whad he say?” whispered the wino. No one told him. The bar was silent.

“Well, well,” said Leroy. “What have we here? A funny man? Ha, ha. Very funny, funny man.”

“Glad you liked it.”

“No,” Leroy said, “I didn’t like it. And I don’t like you, either.”

“Damn,” said the young man, still not raising his eyes.

“Hey, blood,” said Leo, grimacing and shaking his head.

“You let him be now, Leo,” Leroy said. “Sonny, I don’t think I ever seen you around here.”

“I haven’t seen you, either,” said the young man.

“Well,” said Leroy, “let me introduce maself. I’m—”

“You’re Leroy Briggs,” the young man said.

“Why, yes. Seein’ as you knows ma name, I guess you knows who I am.”

“Sure,” said the young man, his eyes still lowered to his glass. “You’re the big bad muthafucka that hasn’t got anything better to do than give rides to cheap whores and call old ladies names and try to make the rest of the world crap in their pants at the sight of you.”

Leroy’s face darkened. “Like I said, I ain’t seen you around here before, an’ I better not be seein’ you again. If I do, it might be the last time anybody ever sees you.”

The young man raised his eyes and looked at the bottles on the backbar. “There might be some folks that wouldn’t like that.”

“There is, huh?” said Leroy, unimpressed.

“Yeah,” said the young man. He turned his head very slowly and stared Leroy straight in the eye.

Leroy looked at him for a moment, and then his expression changed ever so slightly. “There is, huh?” he repeated. The young man turned back and sipped at his scotch, then he looked at Leroy and smiled, nodding slightly. “You work for Gino?” Leroy whispered hoarsely.

“I don’t know any Gino,” the young man said, turning back to his glass.

“You works for Gino,” said Leroy, with conviction.

“If you say so.”

“Well, you listen here. I don’t give a damn ’bout no Gino. I ain’t scared a no Gino. This here’s
ma
territory.”

“Sure,” said the young man in a bored tone of voice. He looked at his nearly empty glass. “About dry here, Leo.”

“You tell Gino,” said Leroy, shaking his finger, “or whoever you works for, you tell ’em I don’t give a shit ’bout no pasty-faced wops. An’ if I ever see your ass around here again you gonna be wishin’ I hadn’t. Where’s ma beer, Leo?”

“Right here,” said Leo promptly.

Leroy picked up the paper bag and turned to go. “Hey there, Mr. Briggs,” said the young man without looking up, “you forgot to pay for that beer.”

Leroy whirled around. “That’s all right,” Leo said quickly, “it’s on the house.” But nobody was paying any attention to Leo. Leroy stared at the young man for a long time, then reached slowly into his pocket and pulled out a five-dollar bill and laid it on the bar. Leo looked back and forth between the two men, then he picked up the bill, took it to the register, rang up the sale, made change, and extended it toward Leroy.

The young man looked at Leroy. “Keep the change,” he said softly. Leo stood confused, eyes wide. The cords stood out on Leroy’s neck, and he trembled slightly with anger. “Keep it,” the young man said. He smiled at Leroy. Leroy held his ground a moment longer, then whirled and barged out into the night.

Leo stared after him, stared at the change in his hand, shrugged, turned to the register, and rang up a sale in the amount. The cash drawer banged and the sound, like a signal, unstopped a flood of conversation, whispers, nervous laughter. “Haw, haw, haw,” bellowed Big Betsy the whore. “Didja hear that, Leo?”

“Naw,” said Leo, wiping sweat from his brow and eyeing the young man nervously.

“Haw, haw, haw,” laughed Big Betsy. “I ast him who Gino was an’ he says he don’t know, he don’t even
like
hamburgers. Haw, haw, haw.”

Leo stared at the young man for a long minute, the expression on his face a mixture of admiration, disbelief, and fear. He picked up a bottle of scotch, uncorked it, and poured the shot glass full, setting it and the uncorked bottle on the bar in front of the young man. The young man reached for his wallet, but Leo waved a hand. “On the house,” he said.

The young man looked at him, shook his head. “I pay.”

Leo smiled. “It seems to me that Mr. Leroy Briggs done already paid for you,” he said, and walked away.

Fifth Street: an uneven lane of cobblestones and trolley tracks that dated from sometime before the Civil War. There had been little traffic then, and there was no traffic now except for the dump trucks trundling away loads of rubble from the buildings being razed in an urban-redevelopment project. Rayburn walked along a weedy path that passed for a sidewalk, his shoes darkening as they absorbed moisture from the tall stalks of dandelion and Queen Anne’s Lace. Halfway down the block, on the nether edge of Society Hill—the point at which demolition had been halted—the side of a rowhouse clearly displayed the outlines of the rooms of the building that had once stood next to it. Now a giant wrecking crane stood there, its heavy leaded ball threatening the remaining structure. Rayburn stared at the scene as he passed, thinking he saw a picture still hanging from the plaster that clung desperately to the side of the building. Behind him, on the far side of the street, a door swung in the wind, banged loudly; Rayburn spun too quickly, nearly falling.

Beyond the hulks of houses was a pit where a high-rise apartment building would one day stand. Rayburn paused outside the white board fence that surrounded the site, peered down into the empty hole. He opened his pants and tried to urinate in order to watch the water fall, but nothing would come. He had just turned away from the fence when he saw the police car turn into the block, and he straightened quickly and tried to walk steadily as he moved farther north. Beside the walls of restored brick he told his troubles to stars made invisible by the glow of the city’s lights: “We as good as dead, her an’ me; good as dead ’cept it ain’t over an’ she still keeps comin’ back. An’ it used to be so fine. But that was when it started. Things is always good when they starts, an’ ends up shit. I’d be comin’ home from the bank an’ she’d be settin’ up there waitin’ for me, prettied up an’ lookin’ fine. It wasn’t gonna last. They tole me that. They said, ‘Rayburn, she’s just like the rest of ’em in that damn family. Every one of ’em wild an’ crazy.’ Well, hell, I wasn’t gonna be listenin’ to that shit. It was good for a while, an’ maybe sometime it’s gonna be good again. Sure it will be. I’ll get things for her some damn way, an’ she’ll be happy. Only, she useta be happy with just me home from work; two in the mornin’ an’ us settin’ up in the front room eatin’ ice cream an’ listenin’ to that little transistor radio, maybe drinkin’ a little beer. An’ she’d come over an’ set up on ma lap just like she was a little girl, an’ I’d hug her an’ pull her hair an’ tease her an’ love her up. If she frowned even, all I ever had to do was say, ‘Hey now, baby,’ an’ she’d cut it right out. They all tole me, they said, ‘She’s just like the rest of ’em, just like her sister, sleepin’ in fifty-cent hotels an’ screwin’ anything that moves.’ I tried to tell ’em she wouldn’ta been doin’ none a that, ’cept she was hungry. Lord knows, nobody oughta have to pay for what they done when they was hungry. An’ she wasn’t nothin’ but seventeen. But they wasn’t gonna listen to me. Well, they was right. Pretty soon she wasn’t happy just havin’ her belly full an’ some clothes on her back. It had to be new. She say, ‘Rayburn, I wants a new dress.’ But I didn’t have no money for a dress like she wanted, an’ I told her so. Only then I come in an’ seen it hangin’ there. …” Rayburn stumbled in a pothole, fell heavily against the side of a building, pushed himself away from it, staggered on.

“WATCHITYOUSTUPIDASSHOLE!!” yelled the taxi driver as his speeding cab missed Rayburn by inches. Market Street, six lanes wide and lit up like day, lay before him like a moat, sequestering another world: Independence Mall, stores, restaurants, offices. Rayburn stepped back on the curb, realizing in a flash of lucidity that he would have to be careful here. He straightened up and realized also that he was almost sober now, almost sober and feeling tired. It was late. The air smelled chilly and stale: late-night city, left over from the day before. He turned left and walked west, the jars as his feet struck the even pavement shaking his bones painfully. His bladder was full, but the street was far too bright for him to do anything about it; Pissing in the middle of South Street was a misdemeanor, pissing in the middle of Market Street was a major crime. The plate-glass department store windows, full of clothes and appliances and half-dressed dummies, reflected his image. It was morning now; outside Gimbels a vendor hawked the Sunday papers. Rayburn shoved his hands deep into his jacket pockets, felt the lining of the left pocket tear a little with a tiny rasping sound. Suddenly he knew where he was going, and his feet moved more quickly. He jingled the change in his right pocket as he walked—seventy-five cents.

He moved through the archway into the courtyard of City Hall and out the other side, feeling a strange urgency. The bank was at Sixteenth Street, but he stopped before he reached it, at the door of a cafeteria of the east side of Sixteenth where many of the bank’s lesser daytime employees ate lunch. The place was still open; Rayburn could see the waitress lounging behind the counter, looking bored. He put his hand on the door, pushed it open, went in. The waitress looked up unhappily. “We’re closin’ in fifteen minutes,” she said. Rayburn ignored her and took a seat at the counter. She shrugged, picked up a damp side towel, wiped the Formica in front of him. “What’ll it be?” she said resignedly.

“A hamburger,” Rayburn said.

“Ain’t got no hamburgers.”

“What you mean? It’s right there on the sign.”

“That’s for daytime. We ain’t gonna keep the grill warmed up this time of night.”

“Well, what do you got?”

“Pie, donuts, toast—stuff like that.”

“I’ll have a piece a blueberry pie.”

“Ain’t got no blueberry pie.”

“I guess I’ll have to have me a piece a somethin’ else.”

The waitress looked at him uneasily.

“What kind a pie do you got?” Rayburn said.

“Onliest kind we ever got is cherry an’ apple, an’ we’re outa cherry.”

Rayburn gave her an amused look. She flushed. “Apple pie an’ some coffee,” Rayburn said.

“Black?” asked the waitress, writing it on her pad before he had a chance to answer.

“No,” Rayburn snarled, “I wants it light. An’ sweet.” He glared at her, but she wasn’t looking at him. Wordlessly, she crossed out “blk” and wrote in “C&S.”

“We’re closin’ in ten minutes,” she said.

“Yeah,” Rayburn said sourly, “so I heard.” She looked at him, shrugged her shoulders, and went to get the pie, stuffing the order pad into her apron pocket.