CHAPTER EIGHT

Their boss quails is like a good man, what he got to do he does.

"Well, that's the way the boats used to sound. Coming close to you from far away. First one would be coming to you when you almost sleep and it sounded like somebody hitting at you, coming slow too, and you can't dodge; only when it goes to hit you, it ain't no pick at all but somebody far away breaking little bottles of all kind of coloured glass. It's still coming at you though. Still coming. Then you heat it close up, like when you're up in the second-story window and look down on a wagon full of watermelons, and you see one of them young juicy melons split wide open all spread out and cool and sweet on top of all the striped green ones like it's waiting just for you, so you can see how red and ripe and juicy it is and all the shiny black seeds it got and all. And you could hear the side-wheels splashing like they don't want to wake nobody up; and us, the girl and I, would lay there feeling like we were rich folks and the boys on the boats would be playing sweet good peach brandy wine. Then the boats would be past the lights would be gone from the window and the music would be going too. Kind of like when you watch a girl in a red dress and a wide straw hat going past you down a lane with tress on both sides, and she's plumb and juicy and kind of switching her tail because she knows you're watching and you know she knows, and you just stand there and watch till you can't see nothing but the top of her red hat and then that goes and you know she's done dropped behind a hill. I've seen a girl like that once. All I could her then would be that Mobile girl – name of Mary – she'll be breathing beside me, and maybe about that time she'd say, "Daddy, you're still awake?" and then I'd grunt, "Uh-huh" and drop on off – Gentlemen, Apollo Zephyr said, "I like to recall them as Mobile days.

"Well, it was like that when I heard Many Lou say, "Daddy: and I know she must have been dreaming about someone from the way she said it and I get mad wondering if it's that boy. I listen to her mumbling for a while trying to hear if she calls his name, but she don't, and I remember that they say if you put the hand of a person who's talking in his sleep in warm water he'll say it all, but the water is too cold and I wouldn't have done it anyway. But I'm realising that she's a woman now, when I feel her turn and squirm against me and throw her arm across my neck, up where the cover didn't reach and I was cold. She said something I couldn't understand, like a woman says when she wants to tease and please a man. I know then she was grown and I wondered how many times it'd happened and it was that doggone boy. I moved her arm and it was soft, but it didn't wake her, so I called her, bit that didn't wake her neither. Then I turned my back and tried to move away, though there wasn't much room and I could still feel her touching me, and moving close to me. The I must have dropped into the dream. I have to tell you about that dream."

I looked at Mr. Leo and stood up, thinking that now was a good time to leave; but he was listening to Zephyr so intensely he didn't see me and I sat down again, cursing the farmer silently. To hell with his dream!

"I don't quite remember it all, but I remember that I was looking for some fat meat. I went to the white folks downtown and they said I should go see me Mr. Broadnax's that he'd given it to me.

Well, he lives up on a hill and I was climbing up there to see him. Seems like that was the highest hill in the world. The more I climbed the farther away Mr. Broadnax's house seems to get.

But finally I reached there. And I was so tired and restless to get to the man, I went through the front door! I know it's wrong but I couldn't help it. I went in and I was standing in a big room full of lighted candles and shiny furniture and pictures on the walls, and soft stuff on the floor. But I didn't see a living soul. So I called his name, but still, nobody came and nobody answered. So I see a door and go through that door and I'm in a big white bedroom, like I've seen one time when I was a little old boy and went to the big house with my Ma. Everything in the room was white and I was standing there knowing I got no business in there. It's a woman's room too. I tried to get out, but I didn't find the door; and all around me I could smell a woman, and I could smell it getting stronger all the time. Then I looked over in a corner and see one of their tall grandfather's clock and I hear it stepping out of it. She got on a nightgown of soft white silky stuff and nothing else and she looks straight to at me. I don't know what to do. I wanted to run, but the only door I saw the one in the clock she stood. I couldn't move and the clock is keeping up a heap racket, it's getting faster and faster all the time. I tried to say something, but I couldn't. Then she started screaming and I though I'd gone deaf, because I couldn't see her mouth working, I couldn't bear nothing. Yet I can still heat the clock and I tried to tell her I'm just looking for Mr. Broadnax's but she didn't hear me. Instead she runs up and grabs me around the neck and holds tight, trying to keep me out of the clock. I didn't know what to do then. I tried to talk to her, I tried to get away. But she was holding me and I was scared to touch her cause she's white. Then I got so scared that I threw her on the bed and tried to break her holt. That woman seemed to sink out of sight, that the bed was so soft. It sinking down so far I think it's going to smother both of is. Then swoosh! All of a sudden a flock of little white geese flies out of the bed like they say you see when you go to dig for buried money. Loud! They hadn't no more'd disappeared than I heard a door open and Mr. Broadnax's voice said, "They're just niggas, leave them."

How can he tell this to white men, I thought, when he knows they'll be say that all Negroes do such things? I looked at the floor, a red mist of anguish before my eyes.

"And I can't stop – although I got a feeling something is wrong. I got loosed from the woman now I'm running for the clock. St first I couldn't get the door open, it had some kind of crinkly stuff like steel wool on the facing. But I got it open and got inside and it was hot and dark in there. I went up a dark tunnel, up near where the machinery is making all that noise and heat. It's like the power plant they got up to the school. It bumming hot as if the house was caught on fire, and I started running, trying to get out. I ran and ran till I should be tired but ain't tried but feeling more rested as I ran and kept on running so good it was like flying and I'm flying and sailing and floating right up over the town.

Only I'm still in the tunnel.

Then way up ahead I saw a bright light like a jack-o-lantern over a graveyard. It got brighter and brighter and I knew I got to catch up with it or else. Then all at once I was right up with it and it burst like a great big electric light in my eyes and scalded me all-over. Only that it wasn't scald, but like I was drowning in a lake where water was hot on the top and had cold numbing currents down under it. Then all at once I'm through it and I'm relieved to be out and in the cold daylight again.

"I woke up intending to tell the old lady about crazy dream. Morning dawn came, and it was getting almost light. And there I am, looking straight in Mary's face and she's beating me and scratching and trembling and shaking and crying all at the same time like she's having a fit. I'm so surprised to move.