But before he did that he wanted to go home. He loped across the Row, running like a boy who had somewhere to get to but didn’t want anybody to know it.
Many people saw him that evening, a well-formed boy with a bush of thick hair cut in a high part and the handsome face of a blackness that even africano people remarked on, a good boy, they said, son of a murderer who had escaped retribution, a lucky boy despite that, who, so they figured, would some day come into one of the three or four largest fortunes in the quarter — former dewbaby, as they called him, black as grandmama’s skillet and kindly.
He was sure they would be looking for him at home so he ducked around behind the big yellow frame AME church on Jefferson where under a pollarded magnolia three little girls were playing fly the hoop. One of them skipped and fell in the dust. She looked up at him as if he was the cause. In the office he found Miss Marvie Appleton who let him use the phone to call the house.
Miss Parker said no one had been around looking for him. He asked her to put Willie Burt on and after a few minutes his raspy voice said he too hadn’t seen anybody looking. But then maybe, Delvin thought, it was too early. Had Willie seen the Ghost? Sho, he was out in the shed eating apples he stole from Mr. Oliver’s supply. Well, would Willie tell Winston to come meet him over behind Miss Louise Marchant’s house where he was working on something for her?
“What?”
“What what?”
“What is it you be working on?” Willie wanted to know.
“I’m helping her to write a letter.”
“Okay,” Willie said, “I’ll tell him.”
“I need him to come fast.”
Which the Ghost did, hotfooting across the Row to the back door of Miss Louise’s lime-green house. Miss Louise was the unmarried sister of Rev Poulice Marchant who for forty years was the minister of the Sweetwater Holiness church and now ten years after he died continued on in fine form and local respect (Miss Louise did) in her small two-story house that was the only one on her block that was painted. As Winston started up the brick back steps Delvin called to him from some redtop bushes by a runoff ditch at the bottom of the yard. The Ghost gave him a misshapen grin and loped over.
“Hey, my boon,” he said.
Delvin told him he needed him to go around to the police station to see what he could find out about a boy being shot.
“Ju shoot him?”
“No. It wadn’t me.”
“Okay, fine,” the Ghost said. He’d been living in the shed semi-permanently for a few weeks now, despite being run off twice or three times by Willie or Elmer, slinking back each time under Delvin’s protection.
“I’m going around behind Heberson’s and get something to eat. Let’s meet right there in two hours’ time — around back.”
The Ghost said this was fine with him, grinned and took off running across the yard in his hunched, loping style, his head stiff on his shoulders and his arms swinging as if he was about to grab something.
It was full dark out and gloomy without lights along the streets except here and there on the corners and little wicklamps burning in the houses like it was still the nineteenth century. Instead of going straight to the store Delvin made his way to the Emporium, slipping along the alley behind his old birth house and ducking into the bordello’s wide yard, easing in under one of the big magnolias in back. He wasn’t sure what the Ghost would do and he felt safer near the bordello. The magnolia’s branches drooped all the way to the ground. He climbed up among them, feeling his sense of hopefulness, his strength, ebbing as he climbed and pushed into the smooth fork and lay along the high limb panting, nauseous and afraid he would vomit. His life felt emptied out, like earth from a barrow, and he saw himself alone, a trembling haint on the edge of the world. His mother must have felt like this. He let out a small cry, a squeak of pain and fright. He wanted to throw himself into the air and fly away but there was no way to do that. His felt his spirit leap out from him like a skittish bird, some creature without knowledge of the world or a way to go. He was suddenly dizzy. “Little Time,” he said, “Little Time,” addressing the tick of his life as if it was a small goblin he might appeal to. But there was nothing. He was terrified of every house in the quarter — in Chattanooga — in the world — but at the same time he wanted to rush into them and beg to be hidden. He thought of the Ghost crammed up under the Emporium. Lord, he would jam himself even deeper if he thought he could stay. He shivered, pressing his face against the tree body. His fingers moved across little whorls and striations like ancient messages age-carved into the bark, indecipherable. “Help me,” he said, “Dear God, Little Time, help me.” His heart hammered like a crazy man trying to get out — or in, he thought, trying to burrow deeper into his own body.
At the three-quarters chiming of the second hour by the courthouse clock he shinnied down and made his way across the Row to Heberson’s. The Ghost was crouched behind a line of garbage cans out back. His eyes gleamed like a cat’s.
“Yeah, they’s been some kind of shooting up that old mountain way. They was talking about it round the jailhouse.”
Delvin felt his insides clutch. A slashing pain driving down his body. He felt suddenly as if he needed to evacuate his bowels. “They say what they have on that?” he said in a crumped, rustly voice.
“Not to me, no, but they was talking about somebody’s got shot up on the mountain and they’s had to carry him out. Haul him out or something — somebody, some mosying wanderer or something or maybe it was a bunch of em up there. Or something else, I can’t remember. It’s mixed up. Shell Pickens — they got him on a drunk charge — was shouting in the back.”
“Was it a boy?”
“When? Yeah, I get you. Could have been. You done shot a boy?”
“No.”
“Was it a white boy?”
Delvin ignored the question. “Did they say who did it?”
“They aint come down real hard on that yet. Leastways not in my hearing. Maybe they holding back on it. Maybe they don’t know. That’d be some luck.”
Delvin turned away. He was afraid he was about to start crying. He felt as if a huge part of him was breaking off, shelving away — as if he was big as a town or a continent, something huge about him that he had never noticed now shifting, rumbling and sliding down, contravening solidity and the future. “You got to excuse me,” he said, ran and pushed through the door of Heberson’s outhouse, shucked, squatted and let loose his bowels. Even as he did so something urged him to flee instantly. He had to grip one of the worn two-by-four supports to hold himself in place. He felt sick, as if his insides had melted in a corrosive heat. He strained over himself, the pungent stink rising as he did so. “Lord God, suppose me,” he said. “Suppose me into your way right now. O Help me help me help me.” He was falling through himself and for a second thought he would pass out. But he came back. He tore off a sheet of the old Collier’s Encyclopedia hanging backless on a hook and cleaned himself, fixed his clothes and came out again into the vaguely light-muddled dark behind the store where the Ghost, pale and swaying, piecing out a mountain tune, waited.
“You done fo it now, aint you?” the Ghost said.
The stars faint above the city like pale drops flicked off heaven’s fingers. Never to be the same again. Tick time, he thought, Little Time.
“Was there anything going on at home?”
“I aint been over there, but when I left out Mr. Oliver was preparing a body — Miss Freedly from over on Godown street, that old woman who used to boil up those pots of molasses in her backyard? You didn’t shoot her, did you?