He didn’t make a fool of himself as he walked under the big rustling trees, didn’t when the half dozen young men pulled up in their green Olds convertible to the front door of the Hopalong Fancy Room and as they jumped out gave him a quick and not-so-quick lookover, one or two trying to place him in the sultry early fall twilight on Red Row — didn’t exchange witticisms or offer challenges or dares or start in on the dozens, he merely walked calmly on. One boy, who had a piece of yellow satin ribbon tied around his waist, nodded at him, a squarish man with a face black and polished as a shoeshine.
Hell, I’m like one of these Sunday showoffs, these fancy boys strutting. But he wasn’t really showing off. He was joining again. He didn’t want to wait until he got up north and found a place in some town not so fearful of africano folk, some mixed neighborhood in Ypsilanti or Pontiac or Toronto where he would settle in and accept a stipend from the Brotherhood of Africa Aid Society to write his autobiography; he wanted in on things now.
The wanting had come on him like an attack of some kind. Or an understanding that appears from nowhere and catches you eating a muffin or sitting on the toilet or shouting out a piece of homemade verse in a hobo camp. This was after all his hometown. On that corner there, Ellenton and Bunker Hill, he had paid a dime for a big sack of scuppernong grapes, bought from Shorty Youngblood, whose sister was said to be the prettiest girl on Red Row. He had hoped buying the grapes would ingratiate him with her but it didn’t. His footprints were all over that corner. He had skipped, run, walked, danced across it, stopped at a shout, laughed, railed against foolishness, his own included, passed by as if he was on his way to glory, or shame, halted in his tracks to tell Mosley Wilkins that he, Delvin, would one day marry Miss Estelle Franks, convey to Arthur Turnbill that it was not possible, as it was claimed in the story about Fleet Willie Barnes, to run a hundred miles nonstop. Over there, in the right now of time, Mrs. Arthur Coventry, standing in her yard futilely raging, just like she used to, swung her cane at a big mullein plant. She called him by name—“You, Delvin Walker!”—asking what sorriness he was up to now. To her, prison or no, he was still just an impertinent boy. She shook the cane at him. A few strands of green matter clung to the tip. He could smell cornbread baking and maybe gingerbread. At Sammy Wolper’s down the street they baked bread every day in a big pig-iron oven, still did apparently, maybe they would forever.
But mostly the street was empty of people he knew. The big round-fendered cars were shiny from the rain earlier in the day. He had lain on the narrow floral-smelling bed in Mrs. Cutler’s house listening to the light, hesitant rain peck at the tin roof, half counting the drops, half coming to know each one, half marking where each hit, which pile of dobber dust, which leaf or cheek, which shingle or board laid aside and forgotten. Forgotten! That was the conjur. That was the evil word. In each place, each comfy corner, each sideboard with its special teapot or trencher, its little carved doodad brought back from campground, he was forgotten; every porch had grown used to his absence, each room and kettle and heart. He had passed, still living, into the realm of ghosts. It was enough to take the heart out of a man. But oddly — and this was odd to him — he felt not an emptiness but a gathering, a sweetness and an openness that he had not expected. He wanted to run forth like a child, singing some snappy song.
He cut along the alley behind Suber’s Hardware, headed toward the Emporium, walking fast under the big skinned sycamores, on his way to someplace with a name. But then for no reason he stopped at the little auto repair garage Jimmy Dandes operated behind his house and stood in shadow under a monkeypaw tree listening to a couple boys playing guitars. He had stopped in this place when he was a child to listen to these boys’ father play ragtime tunes on his banjo. The two boys, twins, he remembered, looked nothing like each other and their playing too strained against harmony. They stood in the alley on each side of a small fire that as far as Delvin could tell had no reason for being except maybe somebody just liked little fires.
Then a young woman in a light, flower-colored dress covered with a white apron came out of the house carrying a big platter of fresh fish. The men quit playing and began to help her. One of them set a four-legged wire grill over the fire, laid a skillet on top and filled the skillet with lard from a tin bucket. The lard crackled and spit and the men stood looking at the fire. One of the boys ran to the house and came back carrying a small table and some plates and a sack of cornmeal. He looked across the alley and saw Delvin standing under the droopy-leafed tree.
“Do we know you?” he said in a friendly way. He was the brother with the lopsided face.
“I’m not sure,” Delvin said, taking a step forward. “I hadn’t been around here for a while.”
“Didn’t you use to work over to the Riverlight cotton warehouse?” the other said.
“No, that wadn’t me.”
“You play ball for the Negro Pioneers?” the first asked. His name, Delvin remembered, was Harley.
“No, I never played ball.”
“You from Chattanooga?” the other with the round face said. Delvin couldn’t remember his name.
“Born and raised.”
The woman was dredging the fish (they looked like bream) in cornmeal and laying them aside on the table. The closer boy — young man — the one whose face seemed to slant too far down on one side, asked if he would like to join them for dinner. Delvin without thinking said he would be happy to.
He helped them fry the fish and then he carried the platter of crackly, steaming bream back into the yard where the young woman directed him to put it down on a long trestle table that had a dark cloth laid on it. Lanterns were lit, citronella lamps set out on two chairs and then, helped by a couple of young girls, an older couple came out — Delvin recognized the father, now grown grizzled, with thin sunken cheeks — and took places in fat armchairs at either end of the table set up under a maple that was still, so he could see in the light, mostly green.
The boys explained to their father that Delvin was raised in Chattanooga and had just returned from several years away. The old man asked who his folks were and Delvin said he had found that they had passed on years ago.
“They would be who now?” the old woman, a sharp-eyed person with puffy cheeks and a light cloud of almost pure white hair, asked.
“Walker,” Delvin said.
“I don’t believe I recollect them,” the old man said. “They live over this way?”
“Long time ago,” Delvin said, “but they moved out toward Shipley Station, died out there.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear they’ve passed,” the old woman said, eyeing him rigorously.
Delvin thanked her. The first bite of fish had burned the roof of his mouth, a problem with hot food he had picked up on the prison circuit. He juggled the fish flesh with his tongue until it was cool and swallowed it down. One of the girls over by her mother giggled and mimicked him. He laughed.
“What sort of work you do?” the old man asked in a friendly way.
“I’m writing on a book,” Delvin said. He took a long pull of tea. It was cooled with chunks of ice hacked off a block. He picked out a piece and pressed it to his lips.
“Burn yoself?” the old man said.
“No sir, I just like ice.”
“Pass that bowl on down,” the old man said to one of the boys, indicating a blue china bowl with ice chunks in it. The girl, slim with a broad mirthful face and quick black eyes, bobbed her head at him. She made big chomping motions.