Ondine laughed lightly. “You mean horse.”
“What?”
“Horse. Horse in midstream. Never mind. You know as well as anybody that I can handle Yardman and you also know that I’m not changing up on you. That’s not what you’re going on about. You’re edgy and I understand. That makes two of us. Three, I guess, since the Principal Beauty locked herself in. She call you for anything yet?”
“No. Not a thing.”
“Me neither.”
“Why three? Jadine ain’t bothered?”
“Not as far as I can see. She’s laughing and swinging around in that coat.”
“Damn.”
“She says we’re overdoing it. That Mr. Street’ll have him out of here today.”
“But what’d he do it for? She say anything about that? I been knowing him for fifty-one years and I never would have guessed—not in a million years—he do something like this. Where does he think he is? Main Line? Ain’t no police out here. Ain’t nobody hardly. He think that nigger came here and hid in his own wife’s bedroom just to get a meal? He could have knocked on the back door and got something to eat. Nobody comes in a house and hides in it for days, weeks…”
Ondine looked at her husband. Talk about changing up, she hadn’t seen him this riled since before they were married. “I know,” she said, “I know that, but Jadine says it was a joke; he had too much liquor and him and her had an argument and…” she stopped.
“…and what? Can’t finish, can you? No, ’cause it don’t make a bit of sense. Not one bit.”
“There’s no point in gnawing it, Sydney, like a dog with a bone. Swallow it or drop it.”
“Can’t do either one.”
“You have to. It ain’t your bone.”
“You have taken leave of your senses, woman. It is my bone and right now it’s stuck in my craw. I live here too. So do you and so does Jadine. My family lives here—not just his. If that nigger wants to steal something or kill somebody you think he’s going to skip us, just ’cause we don’t own it? Hell, no. I sat up in that chair all night, didn’t I? Mr. Street slept like a log. He was snoring like a hound when I went in there this morning.”
“He drank a lot, Jadine says.” She reached in the oven and poked a baking potato.
“Ain’t that much whiskey in the world make a man sleep with a wife-raper down the hall.”
“He didn’t rape anybody. Didn’t even try.”
“Oh? You know what’s on his mind, do you?”
“I know he’s been here long enough and quiet enough to rape, kill, steal—do whatever he wanted and all he did was eat.”
“You amaze me. You really amaze me. All these years I thought I knew you.”
“You’re tired, honey. You didn’t sleep hardly any at all with that gun in your lap, and carrying it around under your coat ain’t making things better. You really ought to put it back where it belongs.”
“Long as he’s in this house, it belongs with me.”
“Come on, now. It’s barely noon. Mr. Street’ll get rid of him just like Jadine said. Then everything will be just like it was.”
“Like it was? Like it was, eh? Not by a long shot. When I brought him his coffee and rolls, he never said a word. Just ‘More coffee, please.’ Ondine, it’s more than just being here, you know. I mean, Mr. Street had him stay in the guest room. The guest room. You understand me?”
“Well?”
“What do you mean, ‘well’?”
“I don’t know what you’re driving at.”
“Where do we sleep? Ondine?”
“Me and you?”
“You heard me.”
“We sleep where we’re supposed to.”
“Where’s that?”
“It’s nice down there, Sydney. And you know it is: sitting room, two bedrooms, patio, bath…”
“But where is it?”
“Over there.”
“Over where?”
“Up over the downstairs kitchen.”
“Right. Up over the downstairs kitchen.”
“Jadine sleeps up there. With them.”
“Jadine? Now I am through. You comparing Jadine to a…a…stinking ignorant swamp nigger? To a wild-eyed pervert who hides in women’s closets? Do you know what he said to me?”
“‘Hi’?”
“Before that. When I was bringing him down the stairs under the barrel of my gun?”
“No, what’d he say?”
“Could he take a leak.”
“A leak?”
“A leak! I got him with his hands up and the safety off and he wants to stop and pee!”
“That’s nerve all right.”
“Nerve? He’s crazy, that’s what. You understand me? Crazy. Liable to do anything. And I have to show him to the guest room and lay him out some fresh pajamas. The guest room, right next to Jadine. I told her to keep that door locked and not to open it up for nobody.”
“You should have left it at that. You didn’t have to go creeping up there all night to make sure. Scared her to death.”
“Wait a minute. Whose side you on?”
“Your side, naturally. Our side. I’m not arguing for him. I told you last night what I thought about it. I just want to calm you down. He’s leaving, Sydney. But we’re not, and I don’t want no big rift between you and Mr. Street about where that Negro slept and why and so forth. I want us to stay here. Like we have been. That old man loves you. Loves us both. Look what he gives us at Christmas.”
“I know all that.”
“Stock. No slippers. No apron. Stock! And look what he did for Jadine, just because you asked him to. You going to break up with him, lose all that just because he got drunk and let a crazy hobo spend the night. We have a future here, as well as a past, and I tell you I can’t pick up and move in with some strange new white folks at my age. I can’t do it.”
“Nobody’s talking about moving.”
“If you keep working yourself up, you’ll rile him, or do something rash, I don’t know.”
“If I stay on here, I have to know whether—”
“See there? If. Already you saying if. Keep on and you’ll have us over in them shacks in Queen of France. You want me shucking crayfish on a porch like those Marys? Do you?”
“You know I don’t.”
“Then drop that bone. Drop it before it chokes you. You know your work. Just do what you’re supposed to do. Here. Take him his potato. Finish the rest of the mail later. Just give Mr. Street his. He likes to read it while he eats, if you call that eating. And Sydney? Don’t worry yourself. Remember, Jadine’s here. Nothing can happen to us as long as she’s here.”
SYDNEY went out with the tray on which a steaming potato in a covered dish was situated to the left of an empty wineglass, a napkin and a stack of mail. As the kitchen door swung on its hinges, Ondine took a deep breath. She had surprised herself. Before Sydney came in she was as nervous as he was. Still tasting her breakfast, too confused to quarrel with Yardman about the unplucked hen. She didn’t put any stock in Jadine’s assurances, but when Sydney looked like he was falling apart, she’d pulled herself together and talked sense. Good sense. That was what surprised her. She talked sense she didn’t know she had about a situation that both frightened and disoriented her. But in talking to Sydney she knew what it was. The man was black. If he’d been a white bum in Mrs. Street’s closet, well, she would have felt different. Sydney was right. It was his bone. Whether they liked it or not. But she was right, too. He had to drop it. The man upstairs wasn’t a Negro—meaning one of them. He was a stranger. (She had made Sydney understand that.) Mr. Street might keep him for two days, three, for his own amusement. And even if he didn’t steal, he was nasty and ignorant and they would have to serve him anyway, if Mr. Street wanted it. Clean his tub, change his bed linen, bring his breakfast to his bed if he wanted it, collect his underwear (Jesus), call him sir, step aside if they met him in the hall, light his cigarettes, hold open his door, see to it there were fresh flowers in his room, books, a dish of mints.