November 1939
WHAT WAS THIS WORLD COMING TO? I DONE HEARD—AND TOLD—a lot of outlandish fibs myself, but this one took the cake.
Me and Yvonne had a lot of enemies, but I never expected one to stoop low enough to finger us with a made-up story about a crime that could have got us lynched or sent back to prison for life. I still couldn’t believe them peckerwood cops busted up the birthday party that me and Yvonne was having to celebrate Willie Frank’s thirty-fifth birthday two nights ago and arrested us for setting up a white girl to be raped.
This was the second time I’d been busted on a bum rap. Thirteen years ago, one of my buddies invited me to go to a grill with him to celebrate my twenty-first birthday. Even though me and him had done a slew of robberies and broke into rich folks’ houses together, he hadn’t bothered to let me know that he was going to rob the place that night. The night cook always worked alone and had been robbed before, so he was prepared. As soon as my buddy pulled out his gun, the cook grabbed a gun from under the counter and shot him dead. I didn’t have nothing to do with that crime, but nobody believed me. I spent the next eight years working on one of the most brutal prison chain gangs in the state. Yvonne had had her troubles with the law, too. Before we met, she’d spent a couple of years locked up for causing an old woman to fall and break her hip when she’d tried to detain Yvonne during a shoplifting incident at a candy store.
We had turned our lives around, got married two years ago, and started a bootlegging business. Prohibition had ended years ago, but a lot of folks still bought alcohol from bootleggers because it was cheaper so we jumped on that bandwagon right away. On top of going into a profitable business, me and Yvonne had even found Jesus. Being on the straight and narrow hadn’t done us much good, though. Because here we was, back in trouble with the law again anyway. I could not believe it. What had I done to be in a pickle for the second time for something I didn’t do? I wondered. God must have been punishing me for all them other crimes I’d got away with. I pushed that thought out of my mind because it was so unpleasant, it gave me a headache.
Two days in that nasty town jail had been hell. During that time, me and Yvonne had got roughed up something terrible by them punk deputies. Two of them nasty buzzards had even made a sport of Yvonne, raping her right before my eyes.
If it hadn’t been for Willie Frank, a righteous white dude I’d met in prison, there was no telling what else might have happened to us. He was our best friend and business associate. To make a long story short, since we bought all the liquor we sold our guests from Willie Frank, he got his uncle Lamar to pull some strings to help us get out of jail. That old man owned a lot of land and his wife’s sister’s daughter was married to the district attorney, so he had a lot of pull in Branson, Alabama.
Lamar Perdue and Sheriff Orval Potts was close buddies and because of “lack of evidence” it had been easy for Lamar to get the charge against us dropped. It hadn’t been cheap, though. Lamar had paid Sheriff Potts two hundred dollars, but he wanted us to pay him three hundred back. Me and Yvonne was already struggling just to get from one day to the next. We knew it was going to be hard for us to come up with that kind of money—and Lamar wanted it by the end of this month. That meant we had only about three weeks to get it. Even if I busted into a dozen houses and stole everything I could carry, there was no way I could come up with three hundred dollars in three weeks. Besides, I had stopped breaking into houses a long time ago. I had quit while I was ahead because I did not want to get arrested again. If I went back to prison, I could handle it, but Yvonne was too dainty to do another stint. I knew I’d have to do something real drastic to get the money we owed Willie Frank’s uncle, and I didn’t care what it was.
A few colored folks had issues with me and Yvonne being so close to Willie Frank because he was the lowest kind of white: a tobacco-chewing, snaggletooth, uneducated hillbilly that made his living running a still. We didn’t care. He was still good people as far as we was concerned. Not only was he a lot of fun; he sold his liquor real cheap to us. But he made the other bootleggers he supplied pay full price. Even with his raggedy teeth, he was still a good-looking guy. He loved the ladies, and they loved him because of his fun-loving attitude, thick blond hair, and blue eyes. And he was a generous soul. He spent a lot of the money he made on colored women. Next to me, he was the second most popular trick that went to Aunt Mattie’s whorehouse.
I felt so much better when Willie Frank drove us home from jail this afternoon. He’d stayed with us for a little while and then he drove over to Cunningham’s Grill, a popular roadhouse on the outskirts of town, to let Mr. Cunningham know we’d be back tomorrow. I worked there as the head cook and Yvonne waited tables. Willie Frank was also going to spread the word among some of our regular guests that we was back in business selling liquor at our house.
He’d said he’d come back to our house tomorrow, but he returned half a hour later with more unpleasant news. “I hate to tell y’all, but Lyla Bullard and her cousin Emmalou told me they done got too skittish to come back over here. They was at the grill when I got there and told me as soon as I walked in the door.” Me and Willie Frank occupied the living-room couch. Yvonne was slumped in a chair facing us, staring off into space one minute, sighing and fidgeting like a worm on a hook the next minute.
“I’m sorry to hear that we lost their business. A lot of colored men came to drink with us because of them,” I replied. Lyla and Emmalou was two middle-aged white women who had come to the house on a regular basis. They had been present on the night of the arrest. I was going to miss them. Maybe it was for the best. Some of our colored female guests didn’t like all the attention they got. For all we knew, it could have been one of them black-ass heifers that made the call to Sheriff Potts! If that turned out to be true, when me and Yvonne found out who they was, we was going to chastise them just as hard as we would a man. I gave Willie Frank a weary look and held my breath for a few seconds as I stroked the two-day-old bristle on my chin. I hadn’t shaved or took a bath since Tuesday morning. I couldn’t wait to get in the bathroom and freshen up. But I wasn’t going to leave the room while Willie Frank was on the premises. His company was so important to me, I wanted to spend as much time around him as I could. Especially after all he had done for us this week. “I hope nobody else decides to stop drinking at our house. If you was to cut us off . . .” The thought of losing Willie Frank was so distressing, I couldn’t even finish my sentence.
He gasped and looked at me like I was crazy. “Hush up! I can’t believe you said that! You ain’t got to worry about me deserting y’all!” he blasted as he wagged his finger in my face.
“Whew.” I wiped off the beads of sweat that had bubbled up on my forehead. “I’m glad to hear that. But I had to bring it up,” I said with a sheepish grin. “Now that that’s out of the way, let me go on. I’ll tell you one thing, I won’t rest easy again until we chastise the devil that got us in trouble. When we find out who they is, we should break some limbs or give them a acid facial. I just might throw in a few knife wounds, and a death threat to boot.”
Willie Frank was as anxious to get his hands on the culprit as we was. The look on his face now was so scrunched up in anger, it made me cringe. I hoped me and Yvonne never ended up on his bad side. Losing Willie Frank as a friend was the least of my worries. I couldn’t figure out why such a farfetched thought even entered my mind in the first place. I couldn’t think of nobody who looked out for us the way he done. As far as I was concerned, he was more like family than our real families was.
“Y’all know I’m ready, willing, and able to help,” Willie Frank said. “We hillbillies believe in mountain justice. I suggest something more severe and permanent, like a shotgun blast to the head.”
Yvonne gasped and sat up ramrod straight, with her eyes as big as pinecones. “Willie Frank, honest to God, you think we should kill somebody?” she asked.
He answered right away. “Yup. As long as that person can still breathe, he’d still be a threat. Now if y’all don’t want to take a chance on something else happening, take my advice.”
Yvonne looked at me with a curious expression on her face. When she raised her eyebrows, I nodded. And all three of us smiled.
I NEVER THOUGHT I’D BE DISCUSSING MURDERING ANOTHER HUMAN being. There was a few I’d locked horns with over the years that I would have loved to bump off, though. Like them three nasty dogs that got me pregnant and left me to fend for myself. But the person who had lied about me and Milton setting up a white girl to get raped had crossed a line. He deserved to die. Whatever Milton wanted to do, I’d go along with it.
After I thought a little more about Willie Frank’s suggestion, I said in a flat tone, “If we going to kill somebody, I don’t want to do it on no Sunday. That would be sacrilegious. I don’t even cuss on the Sabbath.”
“Sugar, like Willie Frank said, we got to do something so this bogeyman won’t be a threat no more. And don’t worry. I wouldn’t stoop low enough to kill nobody on the Lord’s day neither. But first let’s wait until we find out who it is before we decide what to do,” Milton replied.
“Why would it make a difference who he is if we going to kill him?” I wanted to know. “Let’s come up with a plan now.”
“Well, it could be somebody we can’t get at without no witnesses seeing us. Or they might have a gang and weapons and shit. This is one thing we need to think through real good. I just hope it ain’t one of our friends.” Milton suddenly looked so miserable, and I could understand why. The thought of somebody we was close to betraying us almost made me sick to my stomach.
“Swallow me a frog! If that’s the case, he ain’t no friend!” Willie Frank hollered with his eyes blazing with hate. “Don’t spend too much time thinking this thing through. Lollygagging could be a big mistake. We don’t want to give that booger enough time to do something fatal. Good God! I’d be devastated if y’all got killed. Ma, Pa, and all the rest of my folks done got so attached to y’all, they’d never get over it neither.”
Hearing them ominous remarks must have got to Milton. He flinched and looked at me with a dazed and confused expression on his face. I didn’t wait for him to respond to Willie Frank’s outburst. I responded for him. “We won’t waste too much more time. I want to get this over with as soon as possible.”
When Willie Frank left our house again, me and Milton cuddled up on the couch in our bathrobes. Even though we’d drunk two jars of moonshine apiece since we got home, we was still on edge. I could tell from the way he groaned every time he moved that he was still hurting from head to toe. I was, too, but he’d been beat up more than me and had more bruises. “My body been on hold for two days. I need to go sit on the commode for a while. After I relieve myself, I’m going to wash my hair,” I muttered as I toddled up.
“Stay in the bathroom as long as you want, sugar. I’ll just lay here and relax and organize my thoughts.”
“I need to organize my thoughts, too.” I sighed. “I got so many I don’t know how my head can hold them all.”
Half a hour later, I walked back into the living room with a towel wrapped around my head. Milton was hanging halfway off the couch. “I feel so much better,” I said. I plopped down next to him and he leaned in to hug me. I flinched and scooted a few inches away.
“I’m sorry. I know that what them deputies done to you is still fresh on your mind.”
I held up my hand and wagged a finger in his face. I was ready to put that incident behind me and stop talking about it. “Milton, I done almost forgot what it felt like.” I was as mad as I could be about them deputies raping me, but I wasn’t going to harp on it. I didn’t want Milton to be no more upset than he already was.
“Oh. Well, the way you just reacted when I touched you—”
I cut him off right away. “That ain’t the reason I flinched. I done that because I’m scared and I’m going to be scared until we collect them three hundred dollars to give back to Willie Frank’s uncle.” He hugged me again. This time I didn’t flinch. “Milton, I want you to know right now that what happened to me in that jail cell could have been a lot worse. Let’s be glad it wasn’t. So, we don’t never need to conversate about that no more.”
“Oh?”
“I just want you to know that that episode won’t have no effect on our lovemaking. Okay now. Let’s talk about something else.” I puffed up my cheeks and blew out some of the stale air I’d been toting around way too long. I’d rinsed out my mouth with salt and hot water a little while ago, but it hadn’t done much good. The inside of my mouth still tasted like I’d been chewing on an old shoe. “If I can get up enough nerve when we go back to the grill tomorrow, I might ask Mr. Cunningham to loan us some money. But that’s only if he’s in a good mood.”
“And I’ll start feeling Dr. Patterson out the next time I see him. Aunt Mattie is too unpredictable, but I’ll approach her soon, too.”
“That’s good. While I was soaking in the tub, another idea came to me.” I gave Milton a thoughtful look, and then a wide smile. He smiled, too. “What about Odell and Joyce Watson next door? They get free food, clothes, and all kinds of other things from her folks’ store. All they got to pay is rent and a few other bills, so I know they got money to burn.”
Milton groaned. “Humph. Tell me about it. That’s why they such happy so-and-sos,” he snarled with lips quivering.
“They can make us happy, too. On top of the money we need for Lamar, we should hit them up for as much extra as we can. Especially Odell.” We had the goods on Odell, so he was ripe for the taking. When him and Joyce got married five-and-a-half years ago, her folks retired from running MacPherson’s, the most successful black-owned country store in Branson. They had put Odell in charge right away. On top of the big bucks Joyce’s parents was paying him, Joyce was making good money as a teacher’s aide at Mahoney Street Elementary School, the top school for colored kids in town. Besides all that, Odell had a outside woman named Betty Jean and three little boys with her that he was supporting. They lived fifty miles away in Hartville. Milton had accidentally busted him a few months ago when him and a friend happened to stop for a snack at the restaurant where Odell and his secret family was kicking back. Odell gave us money not to blab, whenever we asked for it. Now he was going to have to pay us even more until we made up for the money we’d lost by being stuck in jail. “If we going to borrow a bunch of money anyway, we might as well get enough to treat ourselves to something good. Whatever we get from Odell and Joyce, we could take our time paying them back—if at all. If Joyce puts pressure on us to repay the loan, we’ll borrow more from Odell without her knowing. We can pay off the first loan with the money from the second loan we get from Odell. She’d never know we was robbing Peter to pay Paul.”
“Hmmm.” I must have really struck a nerve because Milton’s eyes was sparkling like black diamonds as he stared at me. “I’m glad you brung that up, Yvonne. I been meaning to tell you that I had already thought about doing that. If we can scrape up enough extra from all the folks we planning on hitting up, I’d like to take you for a buggy ride.” Milton tapped the tip of my nose with his finger and then he leaned over and kissed it. “We ain’t done nothing that much fun since we visited that alligator farm in Florida on our honeymoon.”
“Baby, I’d loved to go for a buggy ride. And I’d like to go gawk at them alligators again someday. But we need money for more important things first. If we get enough, I can buy some smell-goods. I’d like a bottle of that new French fragrance that just came out. I’m getting sick of splashing on vanilla extract.”
Milton chuckled and gently pinched my arm. “Girl, what’s wrong with you? Why would you want to spend money on something like a French fragrance when you can swipe it from MacPherson’s like we do so many other things?”
“Uh-uh. They keep the smell-goods in a locked case, because for a long time that was the thing the other shoplifters swiped the most.”
“All right then. Anything we can get over what we owe Lamar, we should pamper ourselves big-time. You can buy whatever you want with your cut. I’ll use mine to get in a few crap and poker games.”
I took in a sharp breath and shook my head. I didn’t want us to get too carried away and sink into another black hole after we got out of the one we was in now. “Milton, you know I don’t like you gambling too much.” The puppy-dog look on his face made me feel like I was picking on him, so I backed off. “Well, one good thing about you gambling is that it helps keep your temperament under control.”
“Thanks, baby. So, you wouldn’t mind if I start gambling again every now and then with the extra money we get?”
I had a feeling he gambled—and lost—way more than he admitted. I’d been hearing rumors from some of the people who drunk with us that he was always looking for a game to get in. But since I didn’t have no proof that his gambling was out of control, I let it slide. If I did get proof, I’d confront him then. “I do mind. But after what we been through, you can play poker or roll dice every day from now on if you want to—after you help me pay a few bills. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though. Everybody we plan on asking for money might turn us down.”
Milton waved his hand. “Baby, don’t worry your pretty little head about nothing. I got a feeling we’ll get all we need . . .” He gave me a quick peck on the cheek and a pat on my shoulder. “We’ll start with Odell and Joyce. But we should wait a few more days.”
“Why?”
“Because they’ll be surprised enough when they hear how much we need to borrow.” Milton paused and widened his eyes. Then he snapped his fingers. “I just thought of something. Maybe we shouldn’t bring Joyce into the mix too soon, if we do at all. She is such a pig in a poke. If she decides to be stingy, she might put a bug in Odell’s ear and stop him from helping us out. When I decide the time is right, let’s just deal with Odell. You cool with holding off on him for a little while?”
“Yeah, I guess,” I muttered as I teetered up off the couch. “You sit here and get some more rest or go take your bath. I’ll get supper started and fix us some drinks.”
I didn’t agree with Milton about holding off on Odell. But I wanted him to think I did. I had already made up my mind that I was going to approach Odell as soon as I could and hit him up for a few dollars to spend on myself. And I wouldn’t tell Milton.
Friday was when Odell disappeared until Sunday evening, every week. For years, he had been feeding Joyce and everybody else a flimsy cock-and-bull story that he went to his daddy’s house to help his stepmother take care of his sick daddy on weekends—and a few times during the week. The old man lived on the outskirts of town near the swamps. Odell had to drive down a long dark spooky road to get there and he claimed that it took a lot of time to do whatever he had to do, so he always stayed overnight. Brother Lonnie was in poor health, physically and mentally. He hardly ever left his house, but me and Milton bumped into him and his wife, Ellamae, at a fish market two months ago. He looked like he was ready to be embalmed, and nothing he said made much sense. When I brung up Odell’s name, Lonnie gave me a blank look and had to think hard for a few moments to know who I was talking about. Ellamae was such a mean-spirited heifer, people was scared to visit them, so nobody could verify that Odell spent all that time at his daddy’s house. Now that we knew about his business in Hartville with Betty Jean, it was plain as day that his “sick daddy visits” story was hogwash.
I was anxious to see how much I could get from Odell, and I had to get to him before he hit the road tomorrow evening. I couldn’t wait to see his face tomorrow afternoon when he seen mine.
WHEN I GOT IN BED, ALL I COULD THINK ABOUT WAS MY MEETING with Odell tomorrow.
I wondered what Milton would say if he knew I’d been blackmailing Odell, too. I didn’t like to deceive my husband, and I probably wouldn’t have if Odell hadn’t told me that Milton had been blackmailing him behind my back since July. I had a feeling he’d been using his hush money to gamble with. I spent mine mostly on personal items and household expenses. Whatever I got from Odell tomorrow, which I hoped would be at least fifty or sixty bucks, I’d sock it away for when we really needed it. But first I’d treat myself to a new pair of sparkly earbobs and some rouge.
We left home to catch the bus to go back to work at the grill an hour earlier than usual on Friday morning. We wanted Mr. Cunningham to see how eager we was to get back on board. That was why we didn’t want to miss another day, even though we could have both used more rest. But we needed the money more than we needed rest.
We didn’t mind working hard because we’d been doing that since we was kids. Milton and I had worked on farms, and I’d even cleaned houses and done other chores for rich white women. There was no way in the world I wanted to go back to that kind of work. Our bootlegging business was a lot more fun, and we made a heap more money.
There was a bunch of other colored bootleggers and jook joints in town where folks could drink and have a good time. But in just two years, we was so popular, we had almost put them out of business. And it was no wonder. We served much better free snacks, we lived in a house with a indoor toilet—not a stinky outhouse like them others—in a safer neighborhood, and we always had the latest records for our guests to dance to. We had lured a heap of our customers away from them other bootleggers, which was the reason they hated us now. Them bad-mouthing us had backfired and most of the few customers they had left, was gradually trickling over to us. I was worried that our arrest had scared some of our customers off, though. But some of our regulars was so loyal, I expected a decent crowd tonight.
Me and Milton had left our house in silence. But when we got to Odell’s car parked in front of his house, we couldn’t hold back our comments. “He sure spends a lot of time and money keeping that car spit shined.” I laughed.
Milton was quick to respond. “Humph. Prince Charming can afford it.” That was the nickname we called Odell behind his back. We called Joyce Queen of Sheba. “Him and Joyce act like they got royal blood, b. . .
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
