David (32 page)

“Have you got two glasses?” I don't bother asking for a towel to dry off.

“No,” he says.

A quick examination of the room tells me he's not just trying to get rid of me sooner rather than later. Aside from the neatly made bed, a mirrored bureau, and a single wooden chair, there's little to suggest that the room has recently been occupied. There are not even any pictures or keepsakes or books. I suppose I'd imagined drunken disarray. There's no sign of the perfect suicide note either.

“Where are all your books?” I say. Get him talking about his books. Thompson can't not talk about books.

“You have them. I sold them all to you.”

Thompson just stands there, waits for me to contradict him. I pull the cork out of the bottle of Wild Turkey I lifted from my own private stock instead. “You don't need glasses when the liquor is this good,” I say, lifting the whiskey to my lips. I offer the bottle to Thompson. He looks at it, then at me, like the sourest prohibitionist. Accordingly, I take another, longer swig. Incredible: angry insolence even while on a suicide watch. The thought of which makes me even angrier, this time at myself, so I swallow a third time.

“Now you've had your drink,” Thompson says, uncrossing his arms and going to the door.

I stay where I am. “Yours and mine both.”

“Yours and mine both.” He's got his hand on the glass knob now.

“So. This not-drinking business. Is it temporary or permanent?” It's not what I'd planned to say, but, considering I had nothing else planned, it seems as sound a strategy as any.

“Both,” Thompson says, looking pleased with his answer. Private jokes irritate me, even those coming from a man who has absolutely nothing to joke about.

“Impressive,” I say. “You've managed to transcend time. Just like your dear old Uncle Walt.”

Thompson takes his hand off the doorknob. “Don't,” he says.

“Don't what?”

“Don't talk about things you don't understand.”

I sit down on the edge of the bed. It's hard—hard as a newly cut piece of plywood. “Well, you're right about that, anyway. I've never understood how a grown man could swallow any of that ‘What I shall assume, you shall assume' nonsense. But I suppose the human mind will believe whatever it wants to believe.
Needs
to believe.” I raise the bottle and drink, wipe my whiskey-wet lips on the arm of my coat.

Thompson's face turns a decent approximation of a healthy shade of red, rage and indignation managing to accomplish what health and happiness haven't. He opens his mouth to speak but stops himself before anything comes out. In a determinedly calm voice: “It won't work,” he says.

I shake my head, offer over two upturned hands.

Thompson sighs like he's weary of talking to a particularly slow child. “Making me angry enough that I'll forget myself. Forget myself and what it is you came here to find out if I'd done. Which I should have done if I'd had the courage to do it.”

“Don't call it courage.”

“Integrity.”

“That either.”

“What would you call it, then?”

“I'd call it a mistake.”

“That's because you're not in possession of all of the facts.”

“Which facts?”

“The facts that are my life.”

“I'm acquainted with those facts,” I say. “I've seen far worse facts.”

“That's because you're not in possession of all of them.”

I stand up from the bed and go to the window to check on Henry, take the bottle with me. He's still there, sitting in the darkness and the rain, waiting for me to come back. I take a long drink before I speak.

“Fact: you're a white man in a white man's world. Fact: you're an educated man in an ignorant world. Fact: you're free to be as happy or as miserable as you choose to be.” I take another drink.

“You don't believe that,” Thompson says.

“Of course I do. How could I not?” Too much whiskey too soon gangs up on me, makes me feel nauseous and dizzy at the same time. I sit back down on the edge of the bed carefully, like it's my idea.

“You know life isn't that simple.”

“Not for everyone, no,” I say. “But for any man born free it is.”

Thompson runs his hand through his hair, adds an extra lank of greasy bang to the palate of his forehead for his effort. “Let me understand you,” he says. “Because I wasn't born a slave, I'm not allowed to be unhappy.”

“Oh, you're allowed. You just shouldn't be.”

Thompson picks up the bottle from where I left it on the floor, looks at it only for a moment before putting it to his mouth. “And just why the hell not?” he says.

I hold out my hand. Thompson takes another drink then passes me the bottle. “Because it's a sin,” I say.

Thompson looks as if he's actually considering what I've said. “What about you, then?” he finally says.

“What about me?”

“Are you a sinner too?”

I push the cork back inside the bottle. “I need to take my dog home,” I say.

Thompson nods like I've finally said something he can agree with. “Leave the bottle,” he says.

I do what he asks—set the whiskey on the bureau—and let myself out. Thompson will make it through the night.

*

I was still young enough that physical exhaustion wasn't anything a decent night's sleep and a mug of strong black tea in the morning couldn't correct. But it was the other kind of fatigue—the sort that came from having to listen to a bar-hugging bore like Meyers jabber on and on all night about his holiday to Northumberland as a small boy with his father (“the wild icy seas, the great cliffs, the willowy storm clouds racing across the winter sky”)—that wilted the will, no matter how willing. But I was learning. Learning, for instance, how to hear without listening. And learning precisely how much patience a paying customer is owed with his change. And one day I was going to have my own house to come home to—a real home—where there'd be hot water to wash away the workday with and a comfortable chair to commence the rest of the night in and wall-to-wall bookshelves spilling over their wise wares like an overripe fruit tree just drooping to be plucked. Happiness, I knew, had to be bought, just like everything else, and I was willing to pay the price.

Thompson, my last lingering patron, had finally departed, and all I had left to do was bury out back the contents of the evening's accumulated dirty ashtrays and lock up. It was a short walk home to the mattress I'd placed on the floor of one of the empty rooms upstairs. Even though it meant having to go downstairs to Sophia's again, I left Waldo in the backroom
until I was done outside. The week before, he'd almost caught a raccoon before eventually settling on loudly treeing him, and a barking dog wasn't the kind of word of mouth Sophia's was looking for. I'd dug the hole and was on one knee with the bucket of ashes and dead butts when I heard, but didn't see, Burwell.

“You need an errand boy, lad. On your knees is no place for a businessman, respectable or not.”

I finished what I was doing—tapped the bottom of the bucket to empty out the last of the debris—before standing up. It was September blustery, and a patch of tall maple trees near the rear of the property bowed in the wind, the light of the exposed moon revealing Burwell and his three-hundredpound shadow walking toward me. The wind died down and the trees stood back up and I couldn't see either of them again until they were standing only a few feet away. I didn't say anything. They were the ones who were where they weren't supposed to be; let them do the talking.

“What do you say we go inside and have a drink, lad?”

“I'm closed.”

“I thought illegal saloons never closed.”

“This one does.”

Burwell grinned as if genuinely pleased, shook his head. “All business, just like me.” He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out something that looked like a brick. “It's customary to seal a deal with a toast, but to be honest, I've never had much use for customs. Here you are.”

It was a fat stack of bills, twenties by the look of it.

“Go on, take them,” Burwell said. “They're yours.”

“Burwell, I don't know what—and I don't want to know what—this money is supposed to mean, but—”

“You think too much, lad,” Burwell said, pushing the stack of bills closer, nearly jabbing me in the stomach. “That's a sign you've got too much on your mind, too many irons in
the fire. But that's going to change now that you've got a partner to halve your worries.” He poked me, gently, in the midsection with the money. “Come on, take it, it's your fee for cutting me in. I recognize you were the one who put up the initial capital and took the risk. You have to be compensated for that, it's only what's fair. And I think we both can agree that five hundred dollars is fair.
More
than fair.”

I looked at the money, then at Burwell and Ferguson, and instead of being frightened, felt only tired. Tired and bored.

“All right, Burwell, let's settle this once and for all, all right?”

“My thoughts exactly, lad.”

“All right, here's how it's going to be. No, I'm not going to take your money, so you can put that back where it came from. And no, you're not weaseling in on my business, it's mine and it's going to stay mine, and you can either start up your own place or drop the whole idea altogether, but you can put it out of your mind that I'll allow anyone—you or anyone else—to take a piece of what's mine. It's never going to happen.”

Burwell was smiling again, but this time he wasn't amused. I could tell by the way his eyes narrowed behind his spectacles through the smoke of his cigarette. “Is that the truth?”

“That's the truth. And one more thing: if you think you can intimidate me with threats of violence against either me or Sophia's, you're wrong. I swear on my mother's grave, you're wrong. Because you know why, Burwell?” Burwell answered with a cloud of smoke. It wasn't answer enough. “I said, do you know why, Burwell?” My slightly raised voice appeared to wake up Ferguson; I saw him slowly withdraw each of his mallet hands from the pockets of his long coat.

“Why, lad? Why is that?”

“Because now I know what freedom tastes like. And once a slave gets a taste of freedom, he never goes back. Ever.”

Burwell took a slow drag on his cigarette, exhaled a mouthful of smoke just as slowly. “I'm surprised at you, lad, truly surprised. You would think by now you would know my methods. Why would I resort to crude acts of physical aggression when all I need to do is ask you for what I want?”

“Because I already said no. And now you're just talking in circles. And do you know what else? I'm tired, and I've said all I have to say. So unless you or—” After all these years, I still wasn't comfortable talking about Ferguson like he wasn't standing right there. “—you or your help plan on killing me right here and now, I'm going to bed.” I didn't really think either of them would do anything, at least not right now, but I picked up the empty ash bucket anyway.

“Answer me just one question before you retire, lad.”

I switched the bucket from my left hand to my right, from holding it by its handle to gripping it tightly underneath its inside lip. “What?”

“Where were you on the date of August 7?”

“Who cares?”

“So you can't account for your activities on the date in question?”

“What the fuck are you talking about, Burwell?”

“It's a simple question, lad, the kind that gets asked in a court of law every day. Where were you on the date of August 7?”

“I don't know, Burwell. And what's more, I don't care.”

“That is not an attitude I would recommend you adopt when you're standing before judge and jury, lad. It's damning enough that three respected members of Chatham saw you—you, David King—at the scene of the recent act of dynamiting that has shook up our formerly sleepy little town, but without being even able to remember where you were on the nights in question, well . . .”

The maple trees bowed again, like they were praying to the wind, while I took in what Burwell said. “Bullshit,” I said. “There aren't three people who saw me there, because I wasn't there, and you know it.”

“Naturally
I
believe you, lad. But unfortunately, three separate individuals all claim to have witnessed a Negro—that Negro being you—at the scene of the heinous act in quite compromising circumstances. And not only are all three men willing to swear under oath they saw you, but all three are also quite prominent members of our community. From what I understand, one of them is even a member of city council.”

The moon went away with the wind, but my eyes were used to Burwell and Ferguson by now, I could see both of them just fine. “And how is it that you have access to this information?” I said.

“Coincidentally enough, all three gentlemen have taken advantage of my lending services in the recent past. Quite heavy borrowers, all three of them, in fact. But I'm pleased to say that their debts might soon be wiped from the ledgers in their entirety.”

“If they lie for you.”

“If they provide a service for me, yes.”

I thought for a moment. I took another moment.

“Oh, and I would forgo any idea of claiming you were here, serving illegal drinks to a bunch of law-breaking degenerates who are your witnesses. Not unless, of course, you want your establishment to be closed down for good, not to mention raising the no doubt substantial ire of these same lawbreaking degenerates. No one likes a tattletale, you know.”

I took a deep breath. I relaxed my grip on the bucket. There wasn't any other way out, I didn't have any choice. “Let's go inside,” I said. “Let's straighten this out over a drink.”