AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Evans replaced the tarpaulin. The water ran down from the creases in the canvas onto his boots.
“You goddamn swine,” LeBlanc said. His skin was white and the burn on his forehead turned dark as blood.
“Shut that man up,” the captain said.
“I been having trouble with him ever since you left,” Rainack said. “I started to bust him a couple of times.”
“Can’t you keep control of your men, Evans?” the captain said.
“I’d like to take him off in the woods and not come back with him,” Evans said.
“Sonsofbitches.”
“Do you want to keep shut, or you want something across the mouth?” Evans said.
Spittle drooled over LeBlanc’s chin. He sprang on Evans and grabbed him by the throat. The guard fell backwards in the mud with LeBlanc on top of him. Evans’ mouth opened in a dry gasp and his eyes protruded from his head. LeBlanc’s hands tightened into the soft pink skin. Evans fumbled weakly at his holster for his pistol.
Rainack and the captain hit at LeBlanc’s head with their revolvers, and amid the hard bone-splitting knocks he shouted into Evans’ face, the saliva running from his mouth: “You wouldn’t let me wait I had it planned and you wouldn’t give me time goddamn you to hell if you’d only waited I could have done it right—” and then Rainack whipped his pistol barrel across LeBlanc’s temple, and he fell sideways into a pool of water.
J.P. WINFIELD
The show had returned to town two months after it began its tour of the southern portion of the state. It was night, and a large flatbed truck, painted firecracker-red, followed a black sedan over a railroad crossing down a dirt road into the Negro section of town. At first there were board shacks with dirt yards and outbuildings on each side of the road, then farther on, the road became a blacktop lined with taverns, pool halls, shoeshine parlors, and open-air markets which stank of refuse and dead fish and rotted vegetables. The doors to the taverns and pool halls were opened, and the night was filled with the noise of loud jukeboxes and drunken laughter. Negroes loitered along the sidewalk under the neon bar signs and called back and forth to each other across the street. A hillbilly band stood on the open bed of the truck with their instruments. A boxlike piano was bolted to the bed with its back against the cab. Several wood casks were stacked along the side of the piano. The firecracker-red truck was painted with political slogans in big white letters:
LET A HUNGRY MAN KILL A RABBIT
BRING HONEST GOVERNMENT BACK TO LOUISIANA
LET THE GOOD CHURCH PEOPLE HAVE THEIR BINGO GAMES
VOTE FOR JIM LATHROP, A SLAVE TO NO MAN AND A SERVANT TO ALL
THE COMMON MAN IS KING
The sedan and the truck stopped by the taverns. The Negroes on the sidewalk looked at them cautiously. More Negroes appeared in the doorways, and small children ran down the road from the shacks to follow the truck.
“What you want down here?” a Negro said from the sidewalk.
Jim Lathrop got out of the sedan. He was dressed in a light tan suit with a blue sports shirt buttoned at the throat without a tie. He looked at the Negro.
“This is campaign night. Don’t you know this is election time?” he said.
“You ain’t going to get no votes down here,” a woman said.
“How do you know that, sister?” Lathrop said. “How you know you don’t want to vote for me if you haven’t heard what I got to say? How do you know I’m not the only man running for office that can do something for you? Tell me that, sister, and I’ll go on home. Of course you can’t tell me, because you haven’t listened to what I got to say. And that’s why I’m here tonight. You folks don’t have one friend in Baton Rouge and you don’t have many friends in Washington, and I’m down here to tell you how you can get one; I’m here to tell you that there’s one man in this state who is a slave to nobody and a servant to all, and I mean all, no matter if he’s colored or white.”
“You ain’t going to do nothing for us,” a Negro man said.
“You’re wrong, brother. If I get in office you’ll get an even shake. I promise you that. Anyone who ever knew Jim Lathrop will tell you that he takes care of his friends. We got a band tonight and we got plenty to drink. I want you folks to enjoy yourselves while you listen to what I tell you. There’s J.P. Winfield on the truck, star of the Louisiana Jubilee and the Nashville Barn Dance. He’s going to sing you some songs. There’s enough to drink for everybody, so line up at the back of the truck and we’ll get things started.”
No one moved off the sidewalk. Lathrop watched them a minute and went to the truck and took a carton of paper cups from behind the piano and pulled one from the box.
“Bring a cask over here, J.P.,” he said.
J.P. rolled a cask on its bottom to the edge of the truck bed. Lathrop turned on the wood spigot and filled the cup with wine. He drank it empty and crushed the cup in his hand and threw it on the concrete. He filled another and walked to the sidewalk with it.
“I never knew good colored folks to turn down a cup of wine,” he said. “I wouldn’t have bought all them kegs if I’d thought I was going to have to drink it by myself. What about you, brother? You drinking tonight?”
“I drinks any time, morning, noon, or night,” the Negro said.
