The Day of Small Things (17 page)

The Eternal Scapegoat

S
o you saved my sorry Jew hide,” he says, looking at me through his little gold-rimmed glasses. “Well, I believe in tit for tat, Miss Redbird, and I also believe you’ll have need of me soon. I knew the first time I saw you—half-naked, covered with dirt and looking like a wild thing—that our paths would cross and re-cross somewhere down the road.”

He leans back, studying me close. “You remember that peppermint stick? I gave it to your mama to give to you.”

The next Saturday has come around and Mr. Aaron is back. He is setting at the same table as always and I see him first thing when I come downstairs. He holds up one of my red tickets and crooks his finger come here at me. Then he points to the chair across from him.

The band has just struck up a piece called “Carroll County Blues,” which is a tune that just don’t never want to end, and I pull out the chair and set down, feeling some aggravated for the music has got into me and my toes are tapping.

“Why don’t we dance?” I make a pout face at him, like Lola does to Francine when she wants something. “And what do you mean you gave me a peppermint stick? I don’t recollect no such thing. You bought me a co-cola is all.”

But even as the words leave my mouth, I can taste the peppermint stick and smell the pile of dookie his mule left in the road back then. I remember how the dirt of my hidey-hole clung to my sticky hands as I played with my corncob babies. And all the while Mama sat on the front steps, weeping and then hollering meanness at me, turn and about, till she slumped down asleep. In an instant the room around me has faded to shadowy shapes, and him and that long-ago day are right there, fresh in my mind.

I rub my fingers together, almost expecting them to feel sticky. “I remember now,” I say, studying his face hard. “It’s been some time and you’ve held your age right good.”

“Thank you, Redbird Ray.” Mr. Aaron smiles a secret kind of smile and sips at his whisky. “And you’ve gone from a sorry little worm to a beautiful butterfly—or more like one of them bold, night-flying moths that burns up in the lamp flames. You want to be careful of your new wings, Redbird.”

As I look at him and try to make sense of him being here, I decide that if he had wanted to tell the sheriff who I was, he would of already done it … or maybe he had and the sheriff didn’t care. Everwhich, it seems to me there’s more to Mr. Aaron than he lets on and, for good or bad, him and me is tied somehow.

“You still have that old mule?” I ask him, studying him hard to try to make out his age. There are crinkledy lines
at the corners of his eyes but not no other age marks. “Still a peddler man?”

“Still a peddler but I sold my mule to an old man who I knew would treat her right and threw in the wagon for goodwill. Now I ride the train and deal in wholesale. But I’ve taken a notion to settle down for a spell—maybe open a department store in Asheville, which is fast growing from a town to a city. After wandering through deserts and rocky places for so long, it’ll be a pleasure to rest my eyes on these green mountains.”

His face has a faraway look. “ ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,’ ” he says and then raises one eyebrow. “Do you know that psalm?”

He asks the question but don’t wait for an answer, just rattles on and me not understanding the half of it.

“It was one of my kin wrote that,” he brags, “but, as you say, it’s been some time.”

Just then a hand lights on my bare shoulder and I like to jump out of my seat. I look up and it is High Sheriff Hudson standing there.

He is a tall, tall man and stout built without being fat. He’s not bad-looking though his face is as wrinkled as an older man’s might be. All the girls dread taking him on, for they say he is bad to be rough in bed. I know it’s true for Sharleen once showed me a great angry red circle where he’d bit her on the breast. He had even broke the skin. And they all complain of how he smells—it ain’t the stink of not bathing enough but something different, like there is something burned out and dead inside of him.

If it was any other of the customers, the boss wouldn’t put up with such, but as it’s the sheriff … well, who’s gone arrest him? Besides, he could close the Stand down any time he took a notion. So the boss pays the girls out of
his own pocket whenever they go a bout with Sheriff Hudson—the sheriff never pays for nothing, not a drink nor a dance nor a roll in the hay.

His big old hand lays heavy on my shoulder like a dead thing and I have to stop myself from flinching away. There is a bottle in his other hand and he takes a long pull on it afore saying aught. Then he sets the bottle on the table and wipes his arm across his mouth.

“You back, Aaron? Thought we’d seen the last of you.” The hand begins to creep towards my neck and I shiver—someone walking on my grave, Granny would have called it.

“I got me some red tickets,” the sheriff says, “and I got a mind to cut a rug with the prettiest girl in the place. I reckon you can spare her. Matter of fact, I reckon it might be time for you to move your Jew ass on.”

Sheriff Hudson’s hand is around my neck now. It is so big that the fingers can almost meet. And then the big hand closes and begins to pull me up.

I cast a glance at Mr. Aaron, who lifts his hands as if he was saying there weren’t nothing he could do.

“Miss Redbird, I’ll say goodnight now. Thank you for your company. I’ll redeem my other tickets at some later date.”

We both of us are standing now and the sheriff is pulling me towards the dance floor. I hold out one hand to Mr. Aaron, meaning to say I’m sorry, but he turns away and starts for the door.

It is like dancing with a great huge bear. My arms ache with holding them up so high but I know that I must keep dancing and smiling. And all the while his big old hands is traveling up and down my back, feeling and squeezing,
and my face is pushed against his shirt till I know that the buttons will have left their marks.

“Oh, you pretty little thing,” he whispers in my ear, his breath whisky-strong. “I got a mind to arrest you and carry you down to the jail for private questioning. Reckon I best begin by making sure you ain’t packing no hidden weapons.”

And with this he puts his hand right down my dress front and squeezes my titty. I try to pull away but he just yanks me closer and with his other hand brings me tight up against him to where I can feel his pecker hard under his britches.

There has been fellows get frisky with me but not like this. I feel right sure that if I make a fuss, it’s like to rouse him all the more, so I just go on dancing, trying to follow his steps and keep my toes out from under his big old dusty boots.

At last the tune is over and he lets loose of me. The musicianers take a break so as the customers have time to claim a girl for the next dance. Also, now is when a fellow usually offers to buy his partner a drink. He may pay for whisky but what the girl gets is always cold tea out of a special bottle. Everyone knows this but don’t no one ever raise a fuss at paying whisky prices for tea.

Sheriff Hudson don’t offer to escort me to the bar, though I cast a thirsty glance in that direction. He is all worked up and he looks over to the door to upstairs where the boss is setting. Then he grabs my arm and leads me that way.

“Sheriff Hudson!” I cry, hoping to head him off rather than to have him hear a no from the boss. “I don’t go upstairs,” I say. “Everybody knows I just dance.”

He don’t pay me a bit of mind, just keeps hauling me towards the boss and the door to upstairs.

There is a fellow standing there with his arm around Lola. He is dickering with the boss and trying to get credit but he stands aside when he see the sheriff coming.

“Revis,” says the sheriff, not bothering even to speak soft, “I believe I’ll take a turn with Redbird.”

The boss says real cool, “Don’t you still have several of those red tickets I gave you? Price hasn’t changed in the past half hour.” Some of the men standing round start to laugh but break off quick when they see that Sheriff Hudson ain’t even smiling.

He begins to speak real slow, measuring out the words, and I tremble at the anger I can feel in the way he holds me and the way he says, “I ain’t speaking of dancing. I want to go upstairs and I want Redbird here to go with me.”

T
he sheriff’s fingers are digging into my arm and he has one foot on the stairs. I pull back, and when I do, the boss looks a question at me. “Mr. Revis,” I say, my voice sounding little and shaky, “iffen you don’t care, could I talk to you private for a minute?”

He considers, then, “Sheriff Hudson,” he says, “I’ll speak to my employee in my office.” Then he hollers over to the bar, “Cooper, fix up the sheriff with a bottle from my private stock,” and before the sheriff has time to say pea-turkey, the boss has taken me from him and led me back to his room.

He pulls the door to, almost shutting out the sounds of the music starting back up, and as I start to tell him that I don’t want to go with the sheriff, the boss lays a finger on my lips.

“Redbird,” he says, “last week you was ready to go upstairs with that good-looking brakeman off the railroad and I wasn’t for it. It was my thought to save you for
something special. Being a virgin,” he looked hard at me like he was warning me not to say nothing, “being, like I say, a virgin, that first time you should fetch a big price—and you’d share half and half in it. Now, what we have here is a dilemma. For as you know, Sheriff Hudson don’t pay for nothing here at the Stand. It’s part of our …” and the boss reaches up to smooth his mustache, the way he does when he’s studying on something, “… part of our
arrangement
. And he ain’t an easy feller to tell no—”

“Mr. Revis,” I bust right in to what he’s saying, “tell him I’m on my period.”

It ain’t the case but it’ll do till I can think how to get away. For I see now what is in store for me and I know that I don’t want that life, not even for a little while.

The boss nods and winks and steps out the door. I put my ear to it and hear him talking low. The sheriff’s voice is louder but I can’t make out the words except that they are angry. He rumbles along and the boss keeps talking, just as calm. There are other men, drunk by the sound of their voices, but I can’t make out what they say.

Then I hear a woman. “Now, that’s a funny thing. Redbird was on her period two weeks ago, just like all of us. We was laughing about how it is that we all get took that way at once and upstairs business has to shut down. Now if—”

It is that hateful Sharleen. She has fussed, back of this, about me getting special billing and not doing the upstairs work. And then the sheriff breaks in.

“Aye God, Revis, I won’t stand for being put off like this. I don’t care what time of the month it is—if she’s a virgin, like you said, a little more blood won’t matter, now will it?”

There is a bang on the door and the sheriff is standing
there. Back behind him there is a ring of folks, just a-gaping, and that black-hearted Sharleen with a nasty smile on her face. The boss looks at me and jerks his thumb for me to come out and I can see he ain’t going to battle with the sheriff no more.

“Redbird,” he says, not quite looking at me, “you staying clear of upstairs has brought these fellers near to a boil. I reckon it’s time you started and you might as well begin with Sheriff Hudson.”

All them men is looking at me like they was hungry dogs and me a plate of meat. I hear muttering amongst some of them and one of the bolder ones speaks up and asks ain’t there gone be an auction, like when it was Lola’s first time.

Now I know that I am in a pickle, for sure. But rather than hang back and let things be decided for me by a bunch of drunken rowdies with their blood up, I step out bold as brass amongst them.

“I’ll go upstairs tonight with the feller who can dance me down,” says I, lifting my chin and giving a slow look round that gang of men. I let my gaze linger a spell on several of the likeliest and give each one a little bit of a smile or a wink. “Will that suit you, Mr. Revis?”

Well, there is a roaring and a hoo-rahing like you never heard, and though the sheriff tries to argue some more, the boss sees that there will be trouble iffen he don’t side with the crowd. He does about the only thing he can and calls for a dance down with me as the prize. Though, he is quick to put in, it will cost two bits to enter.

The sheriff ain’t happy about this turn of events but he tosses back a glass of whisky and moves away. He ain’t one to take part in any contest where they might be a chance he could lose. I see him grab onto Sharleen’s arm and pull
her towards the stairs. She sends me another poison look but they ain’t nothing she can do but go on up with him. I would feel sorry for her except for her meanness just now.