Billy came over with a glass jar of tea and half a lemon. He put the tea and lemon on top of a milk crate near my chair. Then he went behind the counter and came back with a sack of granulated sugar and a spoon. “This gonna give you some strength,” he said, putting the sugar and spoon on the crate.
I thanked him, and, feeling comfortable and warm, sat back and watched the action. While Billy was bringing me the tea, Ruby had hit Ringo on the side of the head with her pocketbook, and now Ringo, looking pained, ignored her, folded his arms, and stared at the ceiling.
“Come on, Tracy, knock him down,” Ruby bellowed, but Tracy, who was about six feet four and two hundred and fifty pounds, just looked down at the floor and smiled. “Now, Tracy, here, done spar with Joe Louis. Now, Tracy was a fighter!” she went on. “A heavyweight!” She looked at Ringo with scorn.
There was a long pause, during which Ringo took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “It don’t matter what class a man fight in,” Ringo said finally. “It only matter if he any good or not.” He opened his eyes and looked at Ruby. “Now, I was a good middleweight.”
“Uh-uh. You only fair, baby. At the most, you only fair,” she said.
Ringo suddenly began to jump rope and put together some combinations, moving around the room with a wide smile and his eyes half closed. As he passed me the first time around, he winked and said, “How you doing, John?”
Billy was talking in a hoarse whisper to Tracy and Ruby. I couldn’t hear what he said to them, but they were smiling. Ruby clapped her hands and threw her head back and shrieked, “Aw, come on, man, you killing me!”
Tracy covered his mouth with one of his enormous hands, trying to stifle the laughter, but some of it got through. He seemed a little embarrassed and shook his head. During Billy’s whispering, Ruby looked at me from time to time and smiled and waved. Tracy looked at me once, too, and nodded shyly. Then Billy brought them over, and when I stood up, Ruby told me to sit down and save my strength.
“John, this here is Ruby Longstreet and Tracy James,” Billy said.
We shook hands.
“Well, John, we sure glad to know you,” Ruby said, shaking hands again.
I told her the pleasure was all mine.
“I seen you outside earlier, John,” she said.
“I was waiting for a bus.”
“I hear that fool Ringo done give you a fight lesson,” she said. She looked at Ringo, who closed his eyes. “Come on, Ringo, open your eyes!” she said.
But he shut them tighter, and closed his mouth tight, too.
Billy laughed. “John knock him flat,” he said.
“What you hit him with?” Tracy asked me.
“A left,” I said.
“He still blind to a left hand,” Tracy said.
I said that some rain had got in his eye.
“Some rain always getting in his eye,” Ruby said. “If it ain’t for the rain, he been champion.”
Billy laughed, and Tracy covered his face with his hands and shook. Ringo turned his back on us and began to take very deep, noisy breaths.
“Aw, shut up, Ringo, you fat fool!” Ruby said.
I was trying to drink the tea, but I began to laugh so hard that I had to put the jar down, and then the laughter increased all around, and Ringo’s breathing became noisier and his shoulders began to shake. I thought he was laughing, but he turned around and he was crying; tears were streaming down his face. “You all finish?” he asked.
“Will you look at that?” Ruby said.
I felt terribly sorry for him. “Come on, Ringo,” I said. “What’s the matter with you?”
“He just acting,” Billy said.
Ringo pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose and wiped his eyes, and then pulled up a crate and sat down next to me. “John, I feel lousy,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
I told him I was feeling all right.
He patted me on the shoulder. “Well, I glad you feeling better,” he said. He offered me a cigarette from the pack I had given him, and struck a match and gave me a light. “John, you my friend,” he said. “They is some people don’t know what friendship is.” He looked around at everyone.
“Man, if you a friend,” Billy said, “then there ain’t no point having no enemy.”
Ruby began to laugh, and she came over to Ringo and kissed him on top of the head. “Baby, why you so stupid?” she said, smiling widely at him. “Maybe you is the dumbest man in the whole world.”
This revived Ringo, and he grabbed Ruby’s arm and asked her to sit down next to him and be nice. Billy brought three more milk crates over, and Tracy and Ruby sat on two of them, and then Billy brought a pack of six cans of beer and an opener. “Ringo, because you such a good friend, we gonna have a little party,” Billy said.
He went to the front door and locked it. He said there wasn’t any point staying open in all this rain anyhow. I drank my tea while the others drank beer, and then, feeling much better, I drank some beer, too. Ruby, holding her can of beer, announced she was going to sing a song. “I ain’t Mahalia Jackson, but I can sing,” she said.
She could, too. She sang a song, mostly humming it, while Ringo accompanied her with a little dance. He closed his eyes and put his hand in the pockets of his jacket and moved his feet very slowly back and forth.
“Where you coming from, John?” Ruby asked, when she had finished singing.
“New York,” I said. “I came down on the train to see my family.”
“Man, you have been travelling some,” Tracy said, “and you still ain’t home.”
“When you with friends, you home. Ain’t that right, John?” Ringo said.
Ruby said she liked to take train trips. “There ain’t nowhere I want to go, but I do like the ride,” she said.
She asked me if I had a good ride down, and I told them the story of my ride, how my overcoat and wallet had been stolen on the train, and how, after that, I had got sick.
“People get you sick every time,” Ruby said thoughtfully.
“Sure,” Billy said. “And then Ringo get you sick in Washington.”
“I ain’t get John sick,” Ringo said. “I been helping John.”
“You been helping John?” Ruby said. “Who else you help lately?”
“John ain’t the only white man I ever help,” Ringo said, smiling.
“Honey,” Ruby said, leaning forward. “What other white man you nearly kill?”
“Few years ago I was working for this man name of Reddy,” Ringo said, biting the corner of his lip. “In this junk yard out northeast.”
“Yeah,” Bill said. “I remember you and that junk.”
“Well, one day,” Ringo said, “Mr. Reddy is standing on the street watching these colored boys working on a trash truck. They up there singing and laughing, and Mr. Reddy, he say, ‘Boys, you happy. You sure is happy. You have all the fun,’ and one of them colored boys, he say, ‘That’s right, boss. We having some fun,’ and they up there tossing them trash cans around and laughing, and Mr. Reddy, he watch them and smile, and then he walk over to me and he say, ‘Ringo, you colored boys sure is happy,’ and I say, ‘Mr. Reddy, I ain’t happy. Them niggers up on that truck may be happy, but I ain’t,’ and he get real angry, and he say, ‘Don’t give me no lip, Ringo,’ and I laugh. ‘Well, I sure ain’t happy,’ I say, ‘with the wages you paying.’ He fire me.”
Billy guffawed and Tracy put his hands over his face and began to shake.
“How you help him, baby?” Ruby said, looking around at everybody.
Ringo spread his arms and turned his palms upward, and then he broke into a wide smile. “Well, I straighten him out!” he said.