![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
michael_gothard_archiveWARNING: the transcriber has retained all the dialogue present in the original story, including the racist and sexist language, which was in common use when the story was published in 1961.
Act 2
Twenty minutes later. Justin, carrying a quart bottle of rye in a brown paper bag, knocks on the door of Grady and Jackie’s flat, and enters.
Jackie: He took Rex out for a walk.
Justin takes off his coat and puts it on a chair.
Jackie: Is it colder out?
Jackie goes to the window and draws down the blind, then returns to the bed and sits down. Justin takes the bottle of rye out of the bag.
Justin: What did you decide?
Jackie: Grady’s thinking about it.
Justin: Does he always take the dog for a walk when he wants to think?
Jackie: Sometimes.
Justin: Shall I open this?
Jackie: Yeah.
Justin: There’s something I want you to understand, Jackie.
Jackie: What’s that?
Justin: I’m not here to judge you. We do what life’s made us do. We’re all, in a way, victims.
Jackie: How do you mean, victims?
Justin: Oh, the poor, the unlucky, the unfortunate. And not always only those. I’ve never been a prosecuting attorney. It’s institutions I’ll blame, not men, not women.
Jackie: A fella hurts you, you ain’t down on him?
Justin: Hurts you?
Jackie: Does something. Steals your money, lays your wife, says something mean to people about you. You don’t get mad?
Justin [smiling]: I get mad.
Jackie: I’d want to kill a son of a bitch did me harm.
Justin: Wouldn’t the reason why he did it matter?
Jackie: Sure. He’s a mean bastard. That’s the reason.
Jackie stands, and walks over to Justin.
Jackie: I’d like a drink. How about you?
Justin: Isn’t that what the bottle’s for?
Jackie pours drink into two glasses, drinks from hers, and then frowns.
Jackie: I ain’t one of them-what did you call it?
Justin: Victims.
Jackie: I ain’t one. It’s just I don’t like anybody coming along telling me I done wrong. I don’t mind telling myself. That’s different. But I ain’t seen nobody else do so right they can say to me they’re better than I am.
Justin: I don’t think of myself as better than you, Jackie.
Jackie: No? … You got some kind of house in the country, ain’t you?
Justin: Long Island.
Jackie: You got a wife, too. Is she good-looking?
Justin: I’ve thought so for eighteen years.
Jackie: And a kid. A girl. Sixteen, you said. She goes to school?
Justin: Yes, naturally.
Jackie: How do you mean, naturally? [Jackie looks angry] They had to make me go.
Justin: They?
Jackie: My ma. My pa didn’t care so much.
Jackie returns to the bed, where she crouches.
Jackie: That kid of yours, does she take lunch to school with her?
Justin: Lunch?
Jackie [impatient]: Does she take it to school?
Justin: They have a commissary, I think, or the girls eat out.
Jackie [accusatory]: I took lunch. Sugar and melted butter on a cold biscuit. They’d just stick in my stomach.
Justin: What did your father do?
Jackie: Pa? Pa was always going around town and bringing home some boy he found, and Ma would have to feed him because my dad was going to make a prizefighter out of him. That’s what he used to do.
Justin: A prizefighter?
Jackie: Yeah. He was going to manage him. He was going to make all kinds of money with him. Yeah.
Justin: What did your mother say?
Jackie: Whatever she said, she said loud. Because there wasn’t enough in the house for us to eat without having to feed some bum Pa found down near the river fishing or in some poolroom. A champeen out of him. That’s what Pa was going to make. Yeah. So Ma hollered. She did that up to when I just left: holler. Sugar and melted butter, on a cold biscuit, and that rickety old house I couldn’t bring nobody home to. Yeah.
Justin: How old were you?
Jackie: Too young and too old. Why?
Justin: How old were you, actually?
Jackie: Fourteen.
Justin: I suppose it was some boy.
Jackie: No. It wasn’t no boy. It was a fella ran a hardware store. [She laughs] He gave me a bag of candy, them hard candies you can suck all day. I guess I was sure tired of them cold biscuits.
Justin: Weren’t you ever in love with anybody?
Jackie: There’s lots of fellas I liked.
Justin: That isn’t what I mean.
Jackie: There was a fella once, a kind of contractor. We went to a place he knew on the highway that had them tourist cabins. We stayed there a week drinking gin and all he ever went out of the cabin for was to buy more gin. He was a real nice fella.
Justin: The contractor and Grady, you don’t feel the same thing for both of them, do you?
Jackie: Sure not. [She ponders] I’m on my own with them other fellas. For instance, I’m in a place and a fella will say, ‘What are you drinking?’ I’ll tell him. Well, he’s dressed nice or he’s a good dancer and he says something funny to you. Well, I’ll answer him back and then he buys you something or gives you something. Well, with a fella like that I’m alone.
Jackie regards Justin.
Jackie: You ain’t drinking.
Justin takes a drink, then puts the glass down.
Justin: What does Grady mean when he says he’s an entertainer?
Jackie: I told you. It’s the harmonica.
Justin: And he plays it on street corners, and people give him money for it, and he thinks of that was entertainment?
Jackie: Well, he entertains them. What would you call it?
Justin: Yes, I suppose I’d call it that.
Jackie: A person has to be something. Like you call yourself a lawyer. Suppose you just studied the books or something, what would you call yourself?
Justin nods.
Jackie: You know, I knew a fella like you once. His name was Ralph. Ralph something. He was from Carolina. He was kind of sweet.
Justin: Was he?
Jackie: He was a Jewish fella. Funny down South a Jewish fella you meet him once in a while. This fella was married to a girl from Philadelphia. She wasn’t his religion. He was dead to his people because he married her.
Justin: Yes?
Jackie: Say, I’m talking.
Justin: I like to hear you talk.
Jackie: What have you got in that house you live in, a bathtub or a shower?
Justin: Both.
Jackie: A bathtub and a shower?
Justin: Yes.
Jackie: You know what I like to do? I like to get into a hot tub, full of water, and turn the shower on too. Grady thinks I’m crazy.
Justin: Why?
Jackie: Because the tub always overflows but I like to do it. I like to do it about two o’clock in the morning when everybody’s sleeping.
Justin: It must be fine.
Jackie: Hot water. Good and hot. Do you like to watch a girl take a bath?
Justin: I haven’t watched one in years.
Jackie: Grady comes in sometimes and soaps my back. Would you like to soap my back?
Justin: I don’t think so.
Jackie: In the pictures there’s always girls in a bathtub. So fellas must like to see them if it’s in the pictures. You ever see your wife in a bathtub?
Justin: Occasionally.
Jackie: You sit and talk to her? I like Grady to sit and talk to me.
Justin: We usually talk in a slightly more convenient atmosphere.
Jackie: Yeah? What kind of house is it? Big?
Justin: Rather big.
Jackie: With a garden? And a stone wall? And a driveway?
Justin: Something like that.
Jackie: I’ll bet it’s pretty. You got servants? A maid, and people like that around, and a chauffeur?
Justin: No. We don’t have a chauffeur.
Jackie: Why not? You’re rich. A lawyer, you must be rich. Why don’t you have a chauffeur? If I was rich I’d have a chauffeur.
Justin: My wife drives. And so do I.
Jackie: Yeah? All right. I drive too. But if you’re rich, you ought to have a chauffeur. I’d have one. And one of them things you talk through so you could talk to the chauffeur.
Justin: I’m not that rich.
Jackie: And your wife. You said she was good-looking.
Justin: I said I thought she was.
Jackie: Is she better looking than me?
Justin: She’s considerably older than you, Jackie.
Jackie: Yeah? You said I was pretty.
Justin: Yes, you are.
Jackie: I’m healthy. I ain’t never been sick a day. Wouldn’t you look at me if I was sitting up on a stool in a bar and think how can I pick her up? Only you wouldn’t know how.
Justin: Perhaps I wouldn’t.
Jackie: You’d be scared.
Justin: I always am.
Jackie: Come on. I’m at a bar. Let me see you pick me up.
Justin: No.
Jackie: Come on. Here I am. There’s nothing to do in this town. Don’t you even know what to say to a girl?
Justin: I’m afraid not.
Jackie: For Christ sakes. What do you do in that big house you got?
Justin: People visit us. I have friends. We sit, we talk.
Jackie: You play cards?
Justin: Sometimes.
Jackie: And drink?
Justin: Of course.
Jackie: What do you talk about?
Justin: A little of everything.
Jackie: They come with their wives, huh? Or their girl friends?
Justin: Wives, mostly.
Jackie: And you sit and talk. And have a drink. Then you try to make each other’s wives, huh? Come on now. You can’t just talk. You try to make some other fella’s wife, don’t you?
Justin: Not usually. I find I prefer making my own.
Jackie: Sure.
As she talks, she stands, puts her little finger out, and parodies polite conversation.
Jackie: Have another biscuit? They’re delicious. Cookie makes them with sugar and melted butter. [she laughs] Come on. Pick me up. Just like I was at a bar.
Jackie crosses the room and sits in Justin’s lap.
Jackie: Let me see you kiss me, come on.
Jackie puts her hand on him; Justin pushes her off, and she falls to the floor.
Justin [mutters]: I’m sorry.
Jackie: Don’t you never push me. Goddam you. Don’t you never push me.
Justin: I’m sorry.
Jackie gets up off the floor.
Jackie: What do you carry around? A tin whistle?
Justin: I didn’t mean anything. I pushed you off my lap before I thought.
Jackie: You. Coming here. Asking me don’t I want it better. Where? Out in the country? With the pigs and chickens? I hate the goddam country.
Married too. You got it in your mind I’ll tie up with Grady. Listen. I got a sister. She married a goddam sailor. I went to the wedding. She was wearing a big picture hat. He’s got a sea bag. Three years they been married and he keeps that bag packed in a corner of the room. They have an argument, he goes and picks up the sea bag. Once he hit her and she almost fell out of the goddam window. That’s my sister’s marriage.
And Grady. Grady. What you know. What you think you know. You don’t know a goddam thing. Listen. Before we even got to High Point we was in a freight car. We met two other kids in this freight car. They were white. The older one was tall and dopey-looking with thin blond hair and he had pimples and he kept fidgeting around. We got in this freight car with them and I was sleeping on the floor and in the middle of the night I feel somebody’s hands all over me and I wake up thinking it’s Grady.
Well, it ain’t Grady. Grady’s in the corner somewhere asleep. It’s that dopey little bastard and I said, ‘Listen if you don’t quit putting your hands all over me I’m gonna wake up my husband. He’ll beat that dopey head of yours in.’
Well, he got scared, and he said, ‘All right, all right, I was just trying to keep warm.’ He was just dopey. He gave me the creeps. I couldn’t sleep all that night. Then in the morning I said to Grady, ‘What’s the idea leaving me near that dopey freak? That dopey freak had his hands over me all night.’ And Grady said, ‘He had them all over me first, so I thought I’d get a little sleep and let him feel you.’ That was even before we got to High Point.
Grady. You see that bed? All Grady does is sleep in it. That’s all he does. He gets in it and sleeps. Marry Grady, and live in a shack in the country. A lot you know. Worried about them two niggers, but a lot you know.
Grady enters, with Rex. He looks at Jackie, and Justin, and the bottle of rye.
Grady: You’ve been belting it good.
Grady takes the dog off the leash.
Grady: What were you trying? To get her loaded?
Jackie [contemptuously]: Him? I’ve drunk stuff that was still cooking in the bottle. He couldn’t get me loaded.
Grady: That’s enough.
Jackie: Enough of what?
Grady: That.
Jackie: I’ve been telling him my whole life. That’s what I’ve been telling him. Do you want me to say it all over again for you? … He asked me how come you’re an entertainer.
Jackie looks at Justin.
Jackie: Didn’t you? Didn’t you ask? [to Grady] I was telling him all about that little old harmonica.
Grady: That’s right. I play a little old harmonica.
Jackie: On street corners. He’ll play that little old harmonica for him if you ask him to. He keeps it in a little chamois bag. He’ll jig too. You ask him and he’ll play something on that little bitty harmonica and jig too. Ask him. Paid a whole dollar for it. He ain’t got nothing more important to him than that little bitty harmonica. Have you, Grady?
Grady: No. Me and my harmonica.
Jackie: That’s right. [to Justin] You just throw him a nickel or a dime. That’s all. He’s a nickel-and-dime entertainer.
Jackie picks up the bottle; Grady watches her.
Jackie: Why didn’t you take out that little old harmonica and play when we was in that gondola? That would have been a big help. You could have done a little jig step, too, for that brakeman.
Grady: Shut up.
Justin: The brakeman? What do you mean, the brakeman?
Jackie: Why didn’t you play that harmonica for the brakeman, too? You’re a goddam entertainer. That would have entertained him all right.
Justin stands and leans forward over the table.
Justin: What has the brakeman got to do with it? The brakeman wasn’t-
Grady: Shut up. You hear me? You shut up now.
Jackie: Why should I?
Grady: You shut up, that’s all.
Jackie: Shut up. Everybody wants me to shut up. My goddam father. Shut up. That goddam sheriff. Shut up. I’ll let him jazz me and you watch. Then you can tell me shut up some more.
Grady hits Jackie.
Grady: You done it, you bitch.
Jackie backs away until she is flat against the wall.
Justin: It wasn’t the boys at all. Was it? Was it, Jackie? The brakeman. Turner, the brakeman. Of course.
Justin moves towards them both.
Justin: It wasn’t the boys at all. They never touched you, or if they did, it wasn’t anything like the testimony you gave. It was the brakeman, wasn’t it? Turner. Turner who came down into the gondola. Turner who put you there on your back in the straw, feeling the cold iron, the wheels under you … But there was Grady. Grady was there, too.
Jackie: Sure, Grady was there. Wasn’t you, Grady? [she laughs] Sure. Tell him, Grady. You was there.
Justin [disbelieving]: There? Watching?
Jackie: Scared. Because it was a brakeman. Because it was somebody not off a chain gang. Because he’d had me out on that hammock and picked me up on a street corner in Birmingham and I wasn’t nothing. Nothing to go fight a brakeman for and get clubbed or even say stop to. Not Grady. He plays his little harmonica. He stands on the street and plays that little old harmonica and they throw him a nickel or a dime and anybody with a hat on like you or a club or a piece of tin pinned to his shirt scares hell out of Grady. It was just me, wasn’t it, Grady? I been on my back before so why not for a goddam brakeman too who come climbing over and seen us in that gondola and thought it was a nice afternoon for it an he might as well get one free while he could. And Grady watched. Why didn’t you play that goddam harmonica so I’d have had music with it? You could have, couldn’t you, Grady? If Turner said let’s have a little music you’d have taken out that little old bitty thing and played it to accommodate the son of a bitch, wouldn’t you?
All the time in that hammock I wasn’t nothing.
Justin: But the boys.
Jackie: The niggers. Yeah, the niggers. One of them, the one that got killed, came over the top of the car and when he saw us, Grady there watching, and the brakeman at me, he laughed. He stood up there, a young nigger on top of the car, laughing. It was a goddam joke. It was a goddam funny sight. Grady scared and the brakeman getting it free and me on the straw. He turned and called to the other two niggers to come and enjoy it.
I started to scream I’d kill that black bastard. Up there, standing, with the sky behind him, his round black head looking down at us, getting a good look like maybe he never saw anything like it before and never would again. And that’s when Turner went up after him. And maybe because he saw us like that, white and that, or maybe because he was laughing so hard, he didn’t even run. He just tried to take Turner’s club away from him. I guess he wasn’t scared of that club any more after what he’d seen. What was there to be scared of? And him and Turner went off the car together.
Justin [softly]: So there wasn’t even a gun. Or was there? I thought there wasn’t a gun because I couldn’t see a gun in a boy’s hand, coloured or not, riding the trains, or a gun vanishing utterly, that completely. But I was wrong. There was a gun, after all. Oh, not the boy. Not even the brakeman. But being what you are and knowing what you know held a gun on you.
Grady looks at Jackie, who is still standing flat against the wall.
Grady: A bitch’ll fix you. Sooner or later she’ll fix you. You just give her the time she’ll fix you.
Justin: It’s too late. She’s told it now.
Grady: You’ll need it witnessed and sworn to first. [Grady looks past Justin at Jackie] All you had to do was forget it. I didn’t care what you told about the niggers. But you couldn’t forget it, could you?
Justin: Grady, listen. It was the hammock, don’t you see? The night and the lake and the music. She couldn’t understand there was a gun of a kind on you. Even a whore can feel some bitter violation. All she’d asked or been willing to take was that cigarette and a bowl of chili.
Justin grips Grady by the arms.
Justin: Don’t you understand?
Grady shoves Justin aside.
Jackie [whimpers]: Don’t Grady.
Jackie backs through the door into the bathroom, and stands gripping the sink behind her. Grady strikes her. Rex follows them into the bathroom, whimpering. Justin follows, trying to pull Grady away.
Justin: Grady, for God’s sake.
Rex bites Justin on the arm. Justin screams. Grady turns and hits Justin with the almost empty bottle of rye, and he falls to the floor.
Later, Justin regains consciousness, to find himself in the dark. His identification papers have been damaged, and his money and silver cigarette case, stolen. Jackie and Grady have gone.
Act 2
Twenty minutes later. Justin, carrying a quart bottle of rye in a brown paper bag, knocks on the door of Grady and Jackie’s flat, and enters.
Jackie: He took Rex out for a walk.
Justin takes off his coat and puts it on a chair.
Jackie: Is it colder out?
Jackie goes to the window and draws down the blind, then returns to the bed and sits down. Justin takes the bottle of rye out of the bag.
Justin: What did you decide?
Jackie: Grady’s thinking about it.
Justin: Does he always take the dog for a walk when he wants to think?
Jackie: Sometimes.
Justin: Shall I open this?
Jackie: Yeah.
Justin: There’s something I want you to understand, Jackie.
Jackie: What’s that?
Justin: I’m not here to judge you. We do what life’s made us do. We’re all, in a way, victims.
Jackie: How do you mean, victims?
Justin: Oh, the poor, the unlucky, the unfortunate. And not always only those. I’ve never been a prosecuting attorney. It’s institutions I’ll blame, not men, not women.
Jackie: A fella hurts you, you ain’t down on him?
Justin: Hurts you?
Jackie: Does something. Steals your money, lays your wife, says something mean to people about you. You don’t get mad?
Justin [smiling]: I get mad.
Jackie: I’d want to kill a son of a bitch did me harm.
Justin: Wouldn’t the reason why he did it matter?
Jackie: Sure. He’s a mean bastard. That’s the reason.
Jackie stands, and walks over to Justin.
Jackie: I’d like a drink. How about you?
Justin: Isn’t that what the bottle’s for?
Jackie pours drink into two glasses, drinks from hers, and then frowns.
Jackie: I ain’t one of them-what did you call it?
Justin: Victims.
Jackie: I ain’t one. It’s just I don’t like anybody coming along telling me I done wrong. I don’t mind telling myself. That’s different. But I ain’t seen nobody else do so right they can say to me they’re better than I am.
Justin: I don’t think of myself as better than you, Jackie.
Jackie: No? … You got some kind of house in the country, ain’t you?
Justin: Long Island.
Jackie: You got a wife, too. Is she good-looking?
Justin: I’ve thought so for eighteen years.
Jackie: And a kid. A girl. Sixteen, you said. She goes to school?
Justin: Yes, naturally.
Jackie: How do you mean, naturally? [Jackie looks angry] They had to make me go.
Justin: They?
Jackie: My ma. My pa didn’t care so much.
Jackie returns to the bed, where she crouches.
Jackie: That kid of yours, does she take lunch to school with her?
Justin: Lunch?
Jackie [impatient]: Does she take it to school?
Justin: They have a commissary, I think, or the girls eat out.
Jackie [accusatory]: I took lunch. Sugar and melted butter on a cold biscuit. They’d just stick in my stomach.
Justin: What did your father do?
Jackie: Pa? Pa was always going around town and bringing home some boy he found, and Ma would have to feed him because my dad was going to make a prizefighter out of him. That’s what he used to do.
Justin: A prizefighter?
Jackie: Yeah. He was going to manage him. He was going to make all kinds of money with him. Yeah.
Justin: What did your mother say?
Jackie: Whatever she said, she said loud. Because there wasn’t enough in the house for us to eat without having to feed some bum Pa found down near the river fishing or in some poolroom. A champeen out of him. That’s what Pa was going to make. Yeah. So Ma hollered. She did that up to when I just left: holler. Sugar and melted butter, on a cold biscuit, and that rickety old house I couldn’t bring nobody home to. Yeah.
Justin: How old were you?
Jackie: Too young and too old. Why?
Justin: How old were you, actually?
Jackie: Fourteen.
Justin: I suppose it was some boy.
Jackie: No. It wasn’t no boy. It was a fella ran a hardware store. [She laughs] He gave me a bag of candy, them hard candies you can suck all day. I guess I was sure tired of them cold biscuits.
Justin: Weren’t you ever in love with anybody?
Jackie: There’s lots of fellas I liked.
Justin: That isn’t what I mean.
Jackie: There was a fella once, a kind of contractor. We went to a place he knew on the highway that had them tourist cabins. We stayed there a week drinking gin and all he ever went out of the cabin for was to buy more gin. He was a real nice fella.
Justin: The contractor and Grady, you don’t feel the same thing for both of them, do you?
Jackie: Sure not. [She ponders] I’m on my own with them other fellas. For instance, I’m in a place and a fella will say, ‘What are you drinking?’ I’ll tell him. Well, he’s dressed nice or he’s a good dancer and he says something funny to you. Well, I’ll answer him back and then he buys you something or gives you something. Well, with a fella like that I’m alone.
Jackie regards Justin.
Jackie: You ain’t drinking.
Justin takes a drink, then puts the glass down.
Justin: What does Grady mean when he says he’s an entertainer?
Jackie: I told you. It’s the harmonica.
Justin: And he plays it on street corners, and people give him money for it, and he thinks of that was entertainment?
Jackie: Well, he entertains them. What would you call it?
Justin: Yes, I suppose I’d call it that.
Jackie: A person has to be something. Like you call yourself a lawyer. Suppose you just studied the books or something, what would you call yourself?
Justin nods.
Jackie: You know, I knew a fella like you once. His name was Ralph. Ralph something. He was from Carolina. He was kind of sweet.
Justin: Was he?
Jackie: He was a Jewish fella. Funny down South a Jewish fella you meet him once in a while. This fella was married to a girl from Philadelphia. She wasn’t his religion. He was dead to his people because he married her.
Justin: Yes?
Jackie: Say, I’m talking.
Justin: I like to hear you talk.
Jackie: What have you got in that house you live in, a bathtub or a shower?
Justin: Both.
Jackie: A bathtub and a shower?
Justin: Yes.
Jackie: You know what I like to do? I like to get into a hot tub, full of water, and turn the shower on too. Grady thinks I’m crazy.
Justin: Why?
Jackie: Because the tub always overflows but I like to do it. I like to do it about two o’clock in the morning when everybody’s sleeping.
Justin: It must be fine.
Jackie: Hot water. Good and hot. Do you like to watch a girl take a bath?
Justin: I haven’t watched one in years.
Jackie: Grady comes in sometimes and soaps my back. Would you like to soap my back?
Justin: I don’t think so.
Jackie: In the pictures there’s always girls in a bathtub. So fellas must like to see them if it’s in the pictures. You ever see your wife in a bathtub?
Justin: Occasionally.
Jackie: You sit and talk to her? I like Grady to sit and talk to me.
Justin: We usually talk in a slightly more convenient atmosphere.
Jackie: Yeah? What kind of house is it? Big?
Justin: Rather big.
Jackie: With a garden? And a stone wall? And a driveway?
Justin: Something like that.
Jackie: I’ll bet it’s pretty. You got servants? A maid, and people like that around, and a chauffeur?
Justin: No. We don’t have a chauffeur.
Jackie: Why not? You’re rich. A lawyer, you must be rich. Why don’t you have a chauffeur? If I was rich I’d have a chauffeur.
Justin: My wife drives. And so do I.
Jackie: Yeah? All right. I drive too. But if you’re rich, you ought to have a chauffeur. I’d have one. And one of them things you talk through so you could talk to the chauffeur.
Justin: I’m not that rich.
Jackie: And your wife. You said she was good-looking.
Justin: I said I thought she was.
Jackie: Is she better looking than me?
Justin: She’s considerably older than you, Jackie.
Jackie: Yeah? You said I was pretty.
Justin: Yes, you are.
Jackie: I’m healthy. I ain’t never been sick a day. Wouldn’t you look at me if I was sitting up on a stool in a bar and think how can I pick her up? Only you wouldn’t know how.
Justin: Perhaps I wouldn’t.
Jackie: You’d be scared.
Justin: I always am.
Jackie: Come on. I’m at a bar. Let me see you pick me up.
Justin: No.
Jackie: Come on. Here I am. There’s nothing to do in this town. Don’t you even know what to say to a girl?
Justin: I’m afraid not.
Jackie: For Christ sakes. What do you do in that big house you got?
Justin: People visit us. I have friends. We sit, we talk.
Jackie: You play cards?
Justin: Sometimes.
Jackie: And drink?
Justin: Of course.
Jackie: What do you talk about?
Justin: A little of everything.
Jackie: They come with their wives, huh? Or their girl friends?
Justin: Wives, mostly.
Jackie: And you sit and talk. And have a drink. Then you try to make each other’s wives, huh? Come on now. You can’t just talk. You try to make some other fella’s wife, don’t you?
Justin: Not usually. I find I prefer making my own.
Jackie: Sure.
As she talks, she stands, puts her little finger out, and parodies polite conversation.
Jackie: Have another biscuit? They’re delicious. Cookie makes them with sugar and melted butter. [she laughs] Come on. Pick me up. Just like I was at a bar.
Jackie crosses the room and sits in Justin’s lap.
Jackie: Let me see you kiss me, come on.
Jackie puts her hand on him; Justin pushes her off, and she falls to the floor.
Justin [mutters]: I’m sorry.
Jackie: Don’t you never push me. Goddam you. Don’t you never push me.
Justin: I’m sorry.
Jackie gets up off the floor.
Jackie: What do you carry around? A tin whistle?
Justin: I didn’t mean anything. I pushed you off my lap before I thought.
Jackie: You. Coming here. Asking me don’t I want it better. Where? Out in the country? With the pigs and chickens? I hate the goddam country.
Married too. You got it in your mind I’ll tie up with Grady. Listen. I got a sister. She married a goddam sailor. I went to the wedding. She was wearing a big picture hat. He’s got a sea bag. Three years they been married and he keeps that bag packed in a corner of the room. They have an argument, he goes and picks up the sea bag. Once he hit her and she almost fell out of the goddam window. That’s my sister’s marriage.
And Grady. Grady. What you know. What you think you know. You don’t know a goddam thing. Listen. Before we even got to High Point we was in a freight car. We met two other kids in this freight car. They were white. The older one was tall and dopey-looking with thin blond hair and he had pimples and he kept fidgeting around. We got in this freight car with them and I was sleeping on the floor and in the middle of the night I feel somebody’s hands all over me and I wake up thinking it’s Grady.
Well, it ain’t Grady. Grady’s in the corner somewhere asleep. It’s that dopey little bastard and I said, ‘Listen if you don’t quit putting your hands all over me I’m gonna wake up my husband. He’ll beat that dopey head of yours in.’
Well, he got scared, and he said, ‘All right, all right, I was just trying to keep warm.’ He was just dopey. He gave me the creeps. I couldn’t sleep all that night. Then in the morning I said to Grady, ‘What’s the idea leaving me near that dopey freak? That dopey freak had his hands over me all night.’ And Grady said, ‘He had them all over me first, so I thought I’d get a little sleep and let him feel you.’ That was even before we got to High Point.
Grady. You see that bed? All Grady does is sleep in it. That’s all he does. He gets in it and sleeps. Marry Grady, and live in a shack in the country. A lot you know. Worried about them two niggers, but a lot you know.
Grady enters, with Rex. He looks at Jackie, and Justin, and the bottle of rye.
Grady: You’ve been belting it good.
Grady takes the dog off the leash.
Grady: What were you trying? To get her loaded?
Jackie [contemptuously]: Him? I’ve drunk stuff that was still cooking in the bottle. He couldn’t get me loaded.
Grady: That’s enough.
Jackie: Enough of what?
Grady: That.
Jackie: I’ve been telling him my whole life. That’s what I’ve been telling him. Do you want me to say it all over again for you? … He asked me how come you’re an entertainer.
Jackie looks at Justin.
Jackie: Didn’t you? Didn’t you ask? [to Grady] I was telling him all about that little old harmonica.
Grady: That’s right. I play a little old harmonica.
Jackie: On street corners. He’ll play that little old harmonica for him if you ask him to. He keeps it in a little chamois bag. He’ll jig too. You ask him and he’ll play something on that little bitty harmonica and jig too. Ask him. Paid a whole dollar for it. He ain’t got nothing more important to him than that little bitty harmonica. Have you, Grady?
Grady: No. Me and my harmonica.
Jackie: That’s right. [to Justin] You just throw him a nickel or a dime. That’s all. He’s a nickel-and-dime entertainer.
Jackie picks up the bottle; Grady watches her.
Jackie: Why didn’t you take out that little old harmonica and play when we was in that gondola? That would have been a big help. You could have done a little jig step, too, for that brakeman.
Grady: Shut up.
Justin: The brakeman? What do you mean, the brakeman?
Jackie: Why didn’t you play that harmonica for the brakeman, too? You’re a goddam entertainer. That would have entertained him all right.
Justin stands and leans forward over the table.
Justin: What has the brakeman got to do with it? The brakeman wasn’t-
Grady: Shut up. You hear me? You shut up now.
Jackie: Why should I?
Grady: You shut up, that’s all.
Jackie: Shut up. Everybody wants me to shut up. My goddam father. Shut up. That goddam sheriff. Shut up. I’ll let him jazz me and you watch. Then you can tell me shut up some more.
Grady hits Jackie.
Grady: You done it, you bitch.
Jackie backs away until she is flat against the wall.
Justin: It wasn’t the boys at all. Was it? Was it, Jackie? The brakeman. Turner, the brakeman. Of course.
Justin moves towards them both.
Justin: It wasn’t the boys at all. They never touched you, or if they did, it wasn’t anything like the testimony you gave. It was the brakeman, wasn’t it? Turner. Turner who came down into the gondola. Turner who put you there on your back in the straw, feeling the cold iron, the wheels under you … But there was Grady. Grady was there, too.
Jackie: Sure, Grady was there. Wasn’t you, Grady? [she laughs] Sure. Tell him, Grady. You was there.
Justin [disbelieving]: There? Watching?
Jackie: Scared. Because it was a brakeman. Because it was somebody not off a chain gang. Because he’d had me out on that hammock and picked me up on a street corner in Birmingham and I wasn’t nothing. Nothing to go fight a brakeman for and get clubbed or even say stop to. Not Grady. He plays his little harmonica. He stands on the street and plays that little old harmonica and they throw him a nickel or a dime and anybody with a hat on like you or a club or a piece of tin pinned to his shirt scares hell out of Grady. It was just me, wasn’t it, Grady? I been on my back before so why not for a goddam brakeman too who come climbing over and seen us in that gondola and thought it was a nice afternoon for it an he might as well get one free while he could. And Grady watched. Why didn’t you play that goddam harmonica so I’d have had music with it? You could have, couldn’t you, Grady? If Turner said let’s have a little music you’d have taken out that little old bitty thing and played it to accommodate the son of a bitch, wouldn’t you?
All the time in that hammock I wasn’t nothing.
Justin: But the boys.
Jackie: The niggers. Yeah, the niggers. One of them, the one that got killed, came over the top of the car and when he saw us, Grady there watching, and the brakeman at me, he laughed. He stood up there, a young nigger on top of the car, laughing. It was a goddam joke. It was a goddam funny sight. Grady scared and the brakeman getting it free and me on the straw. He turned and called to the other two niggers to come and enjoy it.
I started to scream I’d kill that black bastard. Up there, standing, with the sky behind him, his round black head looking down at us, getting a good look like maybe he never saw anything like it before and never would again. And that’s when Turner went up after him. And maybe because he saw us like that, white and that, or maybe because he was laughing so hard, he didn’t even run. He just tried to take Turner’s club away from him. I guess he wasn’t scared of that club any more after what he’d seen. What was there to be scared of? And him and Turner went off the car together.
Justin [softly]: So there wasn’t even a gun. Or was there? I thought there wasn’t a gun because I couldn’t see a gun in a boy’s hand, coloured or not, riding the trains, or a gun vanishing utterly, that completely. But I was wrong. There was a gun, after all. Oh, not the boy. Not even the brakeman. But being what you are and knowing what you know held a gun on you.
Grady looks at Jackie, who is still standing flat against the wall.
Grady: A bitch’ll fix you. Sooner or later she’ll fix you. You just give her the time she’ll fix you.
Justin: It’s too late. She’s told it now.
Grady: You’ll need it witnessed and sworn to first. [Grady looks past Justin at Jackie] All you had to do was forget it. I didn’t care what you told about the niggers. But you couldn’t forget it, could you?
Justin: Grady, listen. It was the hammock, don’t you see? The night and the lake and the music. She couldn’t understand there was a gun of a kind on you. Even a whore can feel some bitter violation. All she’d asked or been willing to take was that cigarette and a bowl of chili.
Justin grips Grady by the arms.
Justin: Don’t you understand?
Grady shoves Justin aside.
Jackie [whimpers]: Don’t Grady.
Jackie backs through the door into the bathroom, and stands gripping the sink behind her. Grady strikes her. Rex follows them into the bathroom, whimpering. Justin follows, trying to pull Grady away.
Justin: Grady, for God’s sake.
Rex bites Justin on the arm. Justin screams. Grady turns and hits Justin with the almost empty bottle of rye, and he falls to the floor.
Later, Justin regains consciousness, to find himself in the dark. His identification papers have been damaged, and his money and silver cigarette case, stolen. Jackie and Grady have gone.
