Blacky

"A Gentleman's Shelf" by Charles Alfred Muerer

Yesterday did not go exactly as planned.  I got an early start and headed to the exercise course, finished up, came home, showered, and went for a late breakfast at a hip, beat diner that always fills your belly and leaves you smelling of grease.  Cash only.

When I got there, the place was packed, even the counter, so I stood for a bit and as the line moved forward, I got a seat.  An older fellow came in and was standing behind me, unshaven, in forgettable clothing of the ordinary kind, old cracker style.  I moved my chair over to make room for him to sit in the empty chair next to me.

"You want to sit?"

"Thanks."

"Beats standing."

"Yea. . . you can say that."

There were an inordinate amount of pretty women in the diner, so of course I wasn't looking to the cracker so much, but he was chatty.  He came to talk.

"My back just started hurtin' so I went to the doc and he said I've got arthritis back there."

"Man, you're lucky you've gone so long without it.  Hurts like hell, doesn't it?  There have been times when I couldn't get out of bed."

Two stools opened up at the counter next to the cash register.  The old man was talking so I didn't jump up right away and a young guy stepped around us and sat down.  I got up and walked over.

"Hey bud, I think you need to wait in line."

He gave me a look that said he was cool, did I have a problem.  I did and he moved without saying anything.  The old man came over and started saying no, no, that was O.K., but I'd already made a spectacle, so we had to see it through.

"Bullshit, sit down. These stools are backbreakers.  I want to see if you can take it."

The waitress was a new one I'd never seen before, and she was talking to the fellow I'd moved from the  counter.  She was in no hurry to wait on me, but everyone knew the old man and came over to say hello.  So did she.  All the cracker wanted was about "this much" coffee, he said.  I noticed the pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket and thought about how many he'd smoked over coffee in his lifetime.  He leaned over to me and said in a low voice,

"I just told her it excited me just to have her walk by that close.  Look at her."

He stared at me through his old-fashioned trifocals, the kind with the distinct lines.  I nodded.

"I didn't know it ever got this crowded in her," he said.  "I come here every day around seven and it's never like this."

"Weekends, I guess.  All the kids start getting up around noon."

He chuckled and nodded his head.  To my right was a very pretty girl in a dress with an open back and yards of smooth, low-mileage skin and tattoos.  Her hair was curly and bobbed in back and I wanted to look at her, but the cracker was on my left and kept talking.  Well, I'd gotten myself into this, I thought. I might as well enjoy his stories.

"I lived up on 22nd Street most of my life," he said shaking his head.

He looked at me.  I knew what he meant.  The county had changed.  It used to be country up there, an undeveloped part of the region. But everything had changed.  There weren't any white people living up there any more.  I've known crackers all my life, so I wasn't moved to stop him from talking.

"Yea, the place has sure changed," I said.

"We used to farm up there all the way from Sumter street to where the two cherry trees were.  Everybody knew where the cherry trees were.  We had some groves up there, too."

"Cherry trees?  Did they produce?"

"No, they's wild.  Birds used to give 'em hell, though.  Get drunker 'an shit.  They was there about forty years, but they cut 'em down."

I love to hear all this.  This was a good place to grow up before tourism took over.  Like everywhere, there was lots of open land.  But my new friend was talking about the forties.  It was noisy in the diner and I was losing a lot of what he was saying, especially when I turned away to look around to see what the girls were doing.  He was talking about car parts.  I don't know why.

"The road was dirt up there with big potholes.  And when you'd hit into them, you'd come up the other side and had to open the door to let the water out.  Those old model Ts, though, had them twenty inch tires and sat way up.  That's all they was here then, just Fords.  They all used the same parts.  The only thing that'd stop 'em was if you got water up there on the coil.  I remember when they came out and paved Orange Avenue.  I watched 'em bring in all the sand and rocks and cement."

He was shaking his head at the memory of all that work, all that labor.

"It was all niggers doing it.  They worked them boys to death.  And by night, they had to be back home.  They couldn't cross Division Street back then, uh-uh.  Never.  Not at night."

It was true.  When I was fifteen, some of my adventurous buddies and I started going up there.

"It was another world then," I said.  "You ever go up there at night?"

His eyes shot toward me as he lowered his head and gave a wry grin.  He'd been up there.

"Yea, I used to go up to see Nigger Buddy.  That's what we called him.  He didn't think nothing of it.  I'd go up and say, 'You seen Nigger Buddy?' and everybody knew who I meant.  He lived up in that three story boarding house right there at the corner of Division and Church."

He talked that way, as if I knew all of this, knew the boarding house and Nigger Buddy and where everything had been.

"I had three jobs back then.  I never slept.  I sold papers and picked those up at the train station at two a.m.  Boy. . . there were paper stands right there on Orange on all four corners.  It got rough."

He was laughing to himself and shaking his head back and forth at the memory of it.

"If I told those stories. . . I should write a goddamned book, but every word of it would have to be true. You couldn't lie about it.  There'd be people to tell if you were lying."

I thought about that a moment as I looked around again to check on the neighbor to my right.  The waitress was just bringing my food.  And I had an idea.