It was a deliberately unappetizing lunch which she had literally dumped into a beautiful brown and purple Haitian basket as though to disabuse him of any idea that this was a real picnic or that it was important to her. But they ate it all up and wished for more. It was probably that yearning for more that made Jadine ask him, “What do you want out of life?” A tiresome question of monumental ordinariness, the kind artists ask models while they measure the distance between forehead and chin but one which he had apparently given some thought to. “My original dime,” he said. “The one San Francisco gave me for cleaning a tub of sheephead.” He was half sitting, half lying, propped upon his elbow facing her with the sky-blue blue of the sky behind him. “Nothing I ever earned since was like that dime,” he said. “That was the best money in the world and the only real money I ever had. Even better than the seven hundred and fifty dollars I won one time at craps. Now that felt good, you know what I mean, but not like that original dime did. Want to know what I spent it on? Five cigarettes and a Dr Pepper.”
“Five cigarettes?”
“Yeah. They used to sell them loose in the country. That was my first personal, store-bought purchase. You believe that? Wish you could have seen how it looked in the palm of my hand. Shining there.”
“The Dr Pepper?”
“The dime, girl. The dime. You know I picked up money before. In the street and a quarter once on the riverbank. That was something too, you know. Really great. But nothing, nothing was ever like that sheephead dime. That original dime from Frisco.” He paused for a comment from her, but she made none. She just kept busy behind the screen, the wall of her sketch pad. “Just before I left home, I heard he got blown up in a gas explosion. Old Frisco.” He murmured the name. “Son of a bitch. I heard about it on my way out of town, and I couldn’t wait for the funeral. He worked in the gas field and got blown to bits. I left town crying like a baby. He was a nothing kind of dude, mind you. Treated his wife like a dog and ran other women all over town. But I still cried when he got blown up and I was a full-grown man. It must have been that dime, I mean, no money ever meant much to me after that. I couldn’t work just for that—just for money. I like to have it, sure, it feels fine for a while, but there’s no magic in it. No sheephead. No Frisco. And nothing to buy worth anything, anyway. I mean nothing like five Chesterfield cigarettes and a Dr Pepper. Talk about good!” He threw his head back and directed his laughter into the sky. He was beautiful, like that; laughing like that: teeth lips mustache perfect and perfectly disarming. Jadine paused. She could not draw his laughing heaven-raised face. “Well, anyway, I guess that’s what I want, all I want, in the money line. Something nice and simple and personal, you know? My original original dime.”
Jadine’s eyes followed the movements of her charcoal. “Lazy. Really lazy. I never thought I’d hear a black man admit it.” She rubbed the line with her thumb and frowned.
“Uh-uh. I’m not admitting any such thing.” Son’s voice cracked with indignation.
“Ah got duh sun in duh mawnin and duh moon at night.” Jadine waggled her charcoal stick and rocked her head like “truckin on down.” “Oooooo, Ah got plenty of nuffin and nuffin’s plenty fo meeeeeee.”
Son laughed in spite of himself. “That’s not lazy.”
“What is it then?”
“It’s not being able to get excited about money.”
“Get able. Get excited.”
“What for?”
“For you, for yourself, your future. Money isn’t what the scramble’s all about. It’s what money does, can do.”
“What can it do?”
“Please. Don’t give me that transcendental, Thoreau crap. Money is—”
“Who’s that?”
“Who’s who?”
“Thoreau.”
“Jesus.”
“Don’t look disgusted. I’m illiterate.”
“You’re not illiterate. You’re stupid.”
“So tell me; educate me. Who is he?”
“Another time, okay? Just hold your head still and stop making excuses about not having anything. Not even your original dime. It’s not romantic. And it’s not being free. It’s dumb. You think you’re above it, above money, the rat race and all that. But you’re not above it, you’re just without it. It’s a prison, poverty is. Look at what its absence made you do: run, hide, steal, lie.”
“Money didn’t have anything to do with that.”
“Sure it did. If you had some you could have paid a lawyer, a good lawyer, and he would have gotten you off. You think like a kid.”
“Maybe I didn’t want to get off.”
“Then what did you run away for? You told Ondine you got into some trouble with the law and jumped bail.”
“I didn’t want to go to prison.”
“But—”
“That’s not the same thing. I didn’t want their punishment. I wanted my own.”
“Well, you got it.”
“Yeah.”
“And you might end up with theirs and yours.”
“No way.”
“You’re like a baby. A big country baby. Anybody ever tell you that?”
“No. Nobody ever told me that.”
“Well, you are. Like you were just born. Where are your family?”
“Home, I guess.”
“You don’t know?”
“I haven’t been back in a long time.”
“Where in Florida are you from?”
“Eloe.”
“Eloe? What on earth is that? A town?”
“A town, yeah.”
“God. I know it already: gas stations, dust, heat, dogs, shacks, general store with ice coolers full of Dr Pepper.”
“No shacks in Eloe.”
“Tents, then. Trailer camps.”
“Houses. There are ninety houses in Eloe. All black.”
“Black houses?”
“Black people. No whites. No white people live in Eloe.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I’m not.”
“Black mayor?”
“No mayor at all, black or white.”
“Who runs it?”
“Runs itself.”
“Come on. Who pumps the water, hooks up the telephones?”
“Oh, well, white folks do that.”
“I’ll bet they do.”
“But they live in Poncie, Ferris, Sutterfield—off a ways.”
“I see. What work do these ninety black people do?”
“Three hundred and eighty-five. Ninety houses, three hundred and eighty-five people.”
“Okay. What work do they do?”
“They fish a little.”
“Sheephead. Right. Oooooo, Ah got plenty of nuffin…”
“Don’t laugh. They work in the gas field too, in Poncie and Sutterfield. And they farm a little.”
“God. Eloe.”
“Where’s your home?”
“Baltimore. Philadelphia. Paris.”
“City girl.”
“Believe it.”
“Oh, I believe it.”
“Were you ever in Philly?” She put the pad and pencil down and rubbed her fingers together.
“Never.”
“Just as well.” Jadine dug her fingers in the sand then brushed them.
“Not so hot?”
“Well, better than Eloe.”
“Nothing’s better than Eloe.”
“Oh, sure. When’s the last time you were there?”