Contemplating his hands: the basketball hands, the murderer hands.
Long elastic seeming fingers with which he could still get a firm grip on a basketball, he's sure, send it spinning in an arc to drop through the metal rim lightly fluffing out the net, he's sure, outwitting his guard and the other players and running right up to the backboard and leaping and sinking the ball and the crowd delirious with applause, he's sure, only there's a heaviness in him, a coldness in his guts: Man I done all that already, tried all that.
Hurts to think, though, except for basketball Jinx Fairchild would have been nobody much, those years in school: nobody in his teachers' or his classmates' eyes. Just the family, Minnie primarily: his momma cherishing him because she's his momma not because he's anything special. Why are you behaving like some ordinary shiftless nigger?
Why are you cutting your own throat and cutting mine? Minnie had raged. Years ago.
His murderer hands: he's shamefaced in the eyes of God could he be sure there is a God, but in the eyes of man, the white man, men like Bull Hudkins and Mort Garlock and the others, and the Hammond city police, and the criminal justice system of the United States, naw, can't say Jinx Fairchild feels any shame or even much regret. Wishes he hadn't done it, Jesus yes, but doesn't feel regret for the fact that his victim is dead, long dead, and nearly forgotten.
Like the white girl Graice Courtney said, Garlock was so crazy and so mean, someone would surely have killed him someday.
Bad luck it had to be Jinx Fairchild.
* *
She'd argued with him, Why trade your life for his? when it seemed, maybe, he might weaken and turn himself in.
And, It was self defense but no one would believe you.
What to make of Graice Courtney? So fixed upon Jinx Fairchild, and so convinced they were special to each other? Saying I don't want anything from you but the fact of you, which is a statement Jinx understands by instinct but not in any more rational way just as he knows things about Sissy, and Sissy about him, by instinct, that could never be explained.
Saying too in her fierce fixed way, No one is so close to us as we are to each other.
In the days back in high school when they'd seen a good deal of each other, Jinx had always thought something would happen between them not that he'd wanted it to happen, but that he'd felt it would come about apart from his volition, as so many things seemed to happen apart from his volition. But when she'd called him that night and asked him please to meet her so they could talk and they'd parked above the river whispering and touching and kissing and finally he'd said, It's late, I better get you home, he'd been proud of himself for the fact that nothing extreme or irrevocable had happened between them after all. He knew she wanted him to make love to her, and Jesus he'd been ready, but he had not done it, just told himself no no no so they were free and clear of each other and could forget each other maybe, if only she'd let him go.
He'd worried some, that she wouldn't let him go.
And if she hadn't.. what could he have done?
How to explain Graice Courtney to Sissy, for instance? Simply to speak the girl's name would be to violate a secret and to begin a confession that could only end with Jinx Fairchild saying he'd killed a boy once, years ago, self defense maybe but, yes, he'd done it.
This is a strange story, the strangest story of any story I know, and it happened to me.
Graice Courtney respected his distance and never telephoned him again but in the years since she's been away to college in Syracuse she has sent him several odd little letters: single sheets of paper covered in careful schoolgirl handwriting, envelopes addressed to Verlyn Fairchild in care of missis Fairchild at the old East Avenue address.
Skimming these letters, embarrassed impatient, apprehensive, Jinx believed he could hear the girl's cool pleading voice: How are you? I would like so much to hear from you. Just tell me anything, for instance where you are while you're reading this? Ifyou look up what will you see? For instance. Of course, Jinx hadn't answered a single letter.
Sometimes in weak melancholy moods he thinks of her.
Sometimes he fantasizes making love to her. the way she'd wanted him to.
He knows she's gone from Hammond more or less permanently but from time to time he sees her, or someone who resembles her. A head of springy pale bronze hair and the white skin, a slender nerved up body, a girl walking or standing by herself. And his heart kicks, and he wants it to be Graice Courtney and wants it to not be Graice Courtney.
This summer I was up at Cassadaga Park one day with Frankie and he got sleepy from messing around in the wading pool and the hot sun so I'm carrying him in the crook ofmy arm and we go in this big dark old building where the girls' and boys' rooms are and there's ice cream and candy and soda pop you can buy and I'm at the counter going to buy Frankie and me both something and there's this girl behind the counter staring at me but my eyes are sort of dim yetfrom stepping in out of the sun so I can't see her clear and think for a minute it's you..
this long strange minute the two of us are staring at each other until finally the girl smiles and asks what do I want, and I tell her, and she isn't you but there's a special feeling between us, this girl with pale frizzy hair, big wide innocent seeming eyes, halter top, bare shoulders and arms and she's young, may be fifteen, but maturefor her age. the kind of girl it's obvious likes black boys at least as well as white boys or maybe it's men she likes ofany color so I walk out with Frankie hoisted up in the crook of my arm both of us sucking popsicles and feeling pretty goodbut this Jinx Fairchild wouldn't write to Graice Courtney, nor even consider it.
He never will write, he'll provide a photo instead.
* * *
A long, long day.. can t hardly re member how long.
Now it's supper time, pitch black outside but Minnie Fair child hasn't gotten around to starting any meal, she's sitting in the Formica topped breakfast nook, puffy faced, nursing a beer, ad dressing her son Jinx in a voice heavy with sarcasm. You com paring yourself to who? Bobo Ritchie? That trash? He ain't nothing, and you know it. He don't even belong in the U. S. Army except the fool police never caught up with him and arrested him like they should of.
Jinx laughs harshly, says, Like they never caught up with me, Momma?
Minnie stares at him for a blank moment, then brings her Schlitz bottle down hard on the table; there's a crack. like gunfire but the bottle doesn't break. Damn you, boy, I don't like you teasing, she says, suddenly furious. You know it wears me out, you damn kids teasing.
She rants for some minutes complaining not only of Jinx but of Ceci, Ceci and her fresh mouth, and then it's Bea, Bea over at Sunday dinner with her in laws and never having time for Minnie because why? Could be, that girl's embarrassed of her daddy. And her daddy's a damn good man, a fine man for all his faults, and not well these days, and, Lord, who knows what's going to From out of the bedroom at the rear of the little house comes Woodrow's snoring, a patient, rhythmic drone like the sound of wasps in a giant hive.
Jinx says, mumbling, Sorry, Momma. Don't mean to vex you.
Minnie says hotly, You don't vex me, honey, you worry me.
That's worse. Adding in a low voice, If I thought you were halfway serious I wouldn't let you out of this house.
Jinx laughs, startled. Says with his old squirmy twist of his shoulders, Oh, you know I'm not, Momma. Serious.
They fall silent, drinking their beers. Jinx Fairchild is thinking he's never, never done anything like this. sitting in his momma's kitchen drinking beer with her. Jesus, never! Never in his life!
Minnie Fairchild just isn't the type, or wasn't, all those years she'd been his and her other children's stern chiding momma; now she's drinking Schlitz from the bottle, fastidious little sips, but frequent sips. Jinx throws back his head and drinks in quick gulping mouthfuls, then wipes his lips with his fist, suppresses a beery belch.
It's a windy late autumn night, a smell of snow in the air and dried leaves. Past seven thirty and Jinx should get on home. but he just sits. He's tired. A tight band around his head, a threat of squeezing pain, from the goggles he'd been wearing most of the day.
And a faint roaring in his right ear.
He says in his offhand voice, Bobo says he signed up for radio and electronics re pair, that's a useful trade, huh? And they're teaching him to re ad and write.. seems like Bobo went all the way through ninth grade never learning. They damn sure didn't bother teaching him in school, just passed him along.
Minnie says, flaring her nostrils, That simple fool! If anybody did teach him C A T or D O G he'd forget the next day. She pauses, breathing hard. The old cardigan sweater buttoned over her heavy breasts seems barely to contain her emotion. Why are you com paring yourself to such trash, Jinx? You know you're superior. You're aggravating me!
Jinx says, Why am I superior to Bobo? Only just a little smarter, maybe. In school.
Smarter is superior.
Yah? You think so?
I know so.
What kind of smart' we talking about, Momma?
Damn you, shut your mouth.
It's at that moment that Minnie erupts in one of her little temper spasms: shrieking and cursing, without rising from her seat she lashes out, cuffs Jinx hard on the shoulder, turns in her fury and frustration to dislodge a stack of old newspapers and magazines on the window ledge, kicking at them as they go flying. Jinx cringes, laughing.
Waits it out.
This long long day. Begun so long ago, in the dark, can't remember if it is the same day.
In the machine shop at McKenzie Radiator, just inside the main entrance, there's a prominent calendar of the kind that ths plays just the date, the single date, in large black letters. Early on when Jinx Fairchild began working there he grasped the logic of the calendar, said to one of the other, older black men, You know why they have that there? The date like that? and the black man said, Why? and Jinx laughed and said, So we know we're going forward somewhere, not just stuck in the same day. He meant it to be a joke, but the other man just frowned at him as if he was some kind of fool.
Truth is, Jinx Fairchild doesn't have much to say to the other black men at McKenzie. Doesn't have much to say to anyone.
There's a tiredness leaking out of Jinx Fairchild's bones.
Minnie's talking a blue streak, panting and puffing and complaining if she thought he was serious damn what she'd do!
and there's Sissy Weaver! her. and Minnie's own daughters Bea and Ceci! and poor doctor O'Shaughnessy, who was the kindest most decent most generous man Minnie Fairchild has ever known! and doctor O'Shaughnessy's cruel cruel children! and Jinx Fairchild has rested his arms on the table and cradled his head on his arms, he's listening to his momma, to her aggrieved voice rising and falling like music, mixed in with a tremulous zigzag pattern of light, and the roaring of machinery or is it a falls in a river, he's listening es yes yes Momma nobody's serious Momma and then he's slipping off the margin as if off the edge of the table but it isn't the edge of the table he slips off of, he's just asleep.
That you, Sissy? Who's that? You He's stumbling in his underwear, barefoot and dazed, out of the darkened bedroom, blinking, not seeming to know where he is or what's the hour. Heart knocking like crazy against his ribs as if he's in danger, as if he's been cornered in the lavatory at work by Bull Hudkins and Mort Garlock and their friends and he's going to be beaten and made to crawl; it's the time of reckoning at last, it's the time Jinx Fairchild has surely known is coming, all these years but no: it's just Sissy coming home: in that shiny synthetic maroon colored wig that Jinx hates, mincing and sniffing like
Eartha Kitt, Sissy his wife, caramel colored good looking Sissy he'd married, swaying drunk, past 3:30 A. M. and when Jinx asks her where the hell she's been she says, upturning her chin Eartha Kitt style, With ma girlfriends, smart ass, where you been? pushing past her husband like he's hardly there, of no more significance than a piece of furniture or her own boy Vaughan, cowering in the doorway of his and Frankie's room, thumb in his mouth: Lemme past, damn you, what you think you are, police? Sissy's crimson lipstick is smeared not only across her face but onto her mauve jersey blouse and the blouse is buttoned crookedly in back and she's smelling of something stronger than beer, an almost medicinal odor, and there's a large damp stain on her skirt soaked into the tight clinging black OrIon; Jinx is staring at her as if he has never seen her before, he's going to let her go it seems, slamming into the bathroom where maybe like other times she'll have sense enough to poke a forefinger down her throat and bring up hot gushing splashes of vomit to empty her stomach and help clear her head. but, no, he isn't going to let her off so easy, he's fully awake suddenly and yelling, Whore! Bitch! Dirty cunt! into her face, his fingers digging into her shoulders meaning to hurt, and Sissy is squealing in pain like a little girl and slapping at him and her wig's askew and the sight of it pisses Jinx off more so he's pounding her against the wall, his lips laid back from his teeth and his eyes bulging so everything in the dim lit room is shaking and vibrating and the baby has begun to cry in his crib and that makes Jinx angrier and Sissy knees him in the groin just hard enough to throw him into a greater fury so he hits her in the mouth with his elbow and she's spitting blood and laughing, You prick! You! Who in hell're you.