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She rested one hand on the banister. There was a tension under her left eye that had nothing to do with fear. It suggested a level of anger he didn’t want to think about.
“Get out,” she said.
He put his hat back on and unbuttoned his slicker. He looked up the stairs. “Which room?”
“There ain’t no guns allowed here.”
“Go in the kitchen. Take the maid with you. If there’s a phone back there, I’ll hear you.”
“I cain’t go into y’all’s houses, but you can come into mine. You can fuck my girls, but a black man gets lynched if he fucks yours. Who you think you are?”
He tried not to hear what she was saying, tried to ignore her presence and the distraction she represented. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t put his hand on it. He placed one boot on the stairs, the heel of his right hand resting on the ivory grip of the Peacemaker. He looked into the woman’s face. The hatred she felt for him was the kind that no one could confront in a rational manner; for her and her family, the injury probably began with birth in a dirt-floor shack and progressed to a lifetime of picking cotton until their fingers bled, watching a white overseer take any girl he wanted into the woods, being cheated of their wages, living with the daily awareness tha
t a rope or a whip or a prison farm could be their fate.
The woman’s upper lip was damp with moisture. She was breathing through her nose, her nostrils swelling. What was her name? Dora?
“I didn’t do it to you, Dora.”
“Do what?”
“Everything.”
The record continued to play, the needle scratching on the surface.
When your hair has turned to silver,
When your eyes have faded, too,
Just remember, Little Bessie,
None will love you like I do.
“I want the man who tried to blind Beatrice DeMolay,” he said. “I won’t leave till I get him.”
“Ain’t nobody here thrown no acid in nobody’s face.”
“I didn’t say anything about acid.”
She curled one hand into a fist. “You didn’t have to. Everybody on this side of town know about it.”
The three men on the couch were motionless, their cigarettes burning in the ashtray, their eyes fixed on the rug. Hackberry stepped back from the staircase. “You three,” he said.
They lifted their faces.
“Out,” he said.
They didn’t argue. He pushed the door shut behind them and locked the bolt. “Go in the kitchen now,” he said to the woman. “If there’s somebody up there with a gun, you’ll be in trouble you won’t get out of. If not from me, from others.”
“Why you doing this to me?”
“I’m not your enemy. You’d like to believe I am, but I’m not. Now get in the kitchen. If you hear a gunshot, call the police.”
He walked up the stairs slowly, each step creaking under his weight, his elbow holding back the flap of his slicker, his hand gripped tightly on the holstered Peacemaker. He could smell a sour odor rising from his armpits.
When the shots and shells are screaming,
When the bitter duty calls,
