Baby Sis"s face puckered up like a dried prune and she began blubbering. She was a big strong-bodied mulelike young woman, and crying gave her an expression of pure idiocy. She turned to run back to the kitchen but stumbled over a foot and fell drunkenly to the floor. No one paid her any attention because, with her support withdrawn, Reverend Short began to fall.
Mamie clutched him by the arm and helped him into an armchair. "You just set right there, Reverend, and tell me what happened," she said.
He clutched his left side as though in great pain and croaked in a breathless voice, "I went into the bedroom to get a breath of fresh air, and while I was standing in the window watching a policeman chasing a thief, c.h.i.n.k Charlie sneaked up behind me and pushed me out of the window."
"My G.o.d!" Mamie exclaimed. "Then he was trying to kill you."
"Of course he was."
Alamena looked down at the twitching bony face of Reverend Short and said in a rea.s.suring tone, "Mamie, he"s just drunk."
"I"m not the least bit drunk," he denied. "I"ve never drunk a drop of intoxicating liquor in my life."
"Where"s c.h.i.n.k?" Mamie asked, looking about. "c.h.i.n.k!" she called. "Somebody get c.h.i.n.k in here."
"He"s gone," Alamena said. "He left while you and Dulcy were in the c.r.a.pper."
"Your preacher"s just making that up, Aunt Mamie," Dulcy said. "Just "cause him and c.h.i.n.k had an argument "bout the guests you got here."
Mainie looked from her to Reverend Short. "What"s wrong with "em?"
She intended the question for Reverend Short, but Dulcy answered. "He said there shouldn"t be n.o.body here but church members and Big Joe"s lodge brothers, and c.h.i.n.k told him he was forgetting that Big Joe was a gambler himself."
"I"m not saying that Big Joe didn"t sin," Reverend Short said in his loud pulpit voice, forgetting for the moment he was an invalid. "But Big Joe was a dining-car cook on the Pennsylvania Railroad for more than twenty years, and he was a member of The First Holy Roller Church of Harlem, and that"s how G.o.d sees him."
"But these folks here is all his friends," Mamie protested with a look of bewilderment. "Folks who worked with him and saw him all the time."
Reverend Short pursed his lips. "That ain"t the point. You can"t surround his poor soul with all manner of sin and adultery and expect G.o.d to take it to his bosom."
"Jus" what do you mean by that?" Dulcy challenged hotly.
"Let him alone," Mamie said. "Everything has done gone bad enough without all this argument."
"If he don"t stop picking at me with his dirty hints all the time I"m gonna have Johnny whip his a.s.s," Dulcy said in a low grating voice intended only for Mamie, but everyone heard her.
Reverend Short gave her a look of triumphant malevolence.
"Threaten all you want, you Jezebel, but you can"t hide it from the Lord that it was your own devilishness that drove Joe Pullen to an early death."
"That just ain"t so," Mamie Pullen contradicted. "It was just his time. He"s been taking naps like that, with his cigar in his mouth, for years, and it was just his time that he happened to swallow it and choke to death."
"If you want to put up with this chicken-season preacher"s lying, you can," Dulcy said to Mamie. "But I"m going home, and you can just tell Johnny why when he gets here."
Silence followed her as she turned and walked from the apartment. She slammed the door behind her.
Mamie sighed. "Lord, I wish Val was here."
"This house is full of murderers!" Reverend Short exclaimed.
"You shouldn"t say that just because you"ve got a grudge against c.h.i.n.k Charlie," Mamie said.
"For Christ"s sake, Mamie!" Alamena exploded. "If he"d fallen from your bedroom window he"d be lying out there on the sidewalk dead."
Reverend Short stared at her through glazed eyes. A white froth had collected in the corners of his mouth.
"I see a terrible vision," he muttered.
"That ain"t no lie," Alamena said disgustedly. "All you is seeing is visions."
"I see a dead man stabbed in the heart," he said. "Let me fix you a toddy and put you to bed," Mamie said soothingly. "And, Alamena--"
"He don"t need no more to drink," Alamena cut her off.
"For Jesus Christ"s sake, Alamena, stop it. Go phone Doctor Ramsey and tell him to come over here."
"He"s not sick," Alamena said.
"I didn"t say I was sick," Reverend Short said. "He"s just trying to stir up trouble for some reason." "I"m hurt," Reverend Short stated. "You"d be hurt, too, if somebody had pushed you out of a window."
Mamie took Alamena by the arm and tried to pull her away. "Go now and telephone the doctor."
But Alamena pulled back. "Listen, Mamie Pullen, for G.o.d"s sake be your age. If he fell out of that window it"s a cinch he couldn"t have walked back upstairs. I suppose he"s going to tell you next that he fell into the lap of G.o.d."
"I fell into a basket of bread," Reverend Short declared. At last the guests laughed with relief. Now they knew the good reverend was joking. Even Mamie couldn"t restrain herself.
"See what I mean?" Alamena said.
"Reverend Short, shame on you, pulling our leg like that," Mamie said indulgently.
"If you don"t believe me, go look at the bread," Reverend Short challenged.
"What bread?"
"The basket of bread I fell into. It"s on the sidewalk in front of the A&P store. G.o.d put it there to break my fall."
Mamie and Alamena exchanged glances.
"I"ll go look, you go call the doctor," Mamie said.
"I want to look, too."
Everybody wanted to look.
Sighing loudly, as though indulging the whims of a lunatic against her better judgement, Mamie led the way.
The bedroom door was closed. When she opened it, she exclaimed, "Why, the light"s on!"
With growing trepidation she crossed the lighted bedroom and leaned out of the open window. Alamena leaned out beside her. The others squeezed into the mediumsized room. As many as could peered over the two women"s shoulders.
"Is it there?" someone in back asked.
"Does they see it?"
"There"s a basket of some kind, sure enough," Alamena said.
"But it don"t look like it"s no bread in it," the man peering over her shoulder said.
"It don"t even look like a bread basket," Mamie said, trying to penetrate the early morning shadows with her near-sighted gaze. "It looks like one of them wicker baskets they take away dead bodies in."
By then Alamena"s sharp vision had become accustomed to the dark.
"It"s a bread basket, all right. But there"s a man already lying in it."
"A drunk," Mamie said in a voice of relief. "No doubt that"s what Reverend Short saw that gave him the idea of fooling us."
"He don"t look drunk to me," said the man who was leaning over her shoulder. "He"s lying too straight, and drunks always lay crooked."
"My G.o.d!" Alamena exclaimed in a fear-stricken voice. "He"s got a knife sticking in him."
Mainie let out a long moaning keen. "Lord, protect us, can you see his face, child? I"m getting so old I can"t see a lick. Is it c.h.i.n.k?"
Alamena put her arm about Mamie"s waist and slowly pulled her from the window.
"No, it ain"t c.h.i.n.k," she said. "It looks to me like VaL"
4.
Everyone rushed toward the outside door to be the first downstairs. But before Maniie and Alamena could get out the telephone began to ring.
"Who in the h.e.l.l could that be at this hour?" Alamena said roughly.
"You go ahead, I"ll answer it," Mamie said. Alamena went on without replying. Mainie went back into the bedroom and lifted the receiver of the telephone on the nightstand beside the bed.
"h.e.l.lo."
"Are you Mrs. Pullen?" a m.u.f.fled voice asked. It was so blurred she could scarcely distinguish the words.
"Yes."
"There"s a dead man out in front of your house."
She could have sworn the voice held a note of laughter.
"Who are you?" she asked suspiciously.
"I ain"t n.o.body."
"It ain"t so G.o.ddam funny that you got to make a joke about it," she said roughly.
"I ain"t joking. If you don"t believe me, go to the window and take a look."
"Why the h.e.l.l didn"t you call the police?"
"I reckoned that maybe you wouldn"t want them to know."
Suddenly the whole conversation stopped making sense to Mamie. She tried to collect her thoughts, but she was so tired her head buzzed. And all this monkey business of Reverend Short"s, and then Val"s getting stabbed to death with Big Joe lying dead there in the coffin, left her feeling as though she had stepped off the edge of sanity.
"Why the h.e.l.l wouldn"t I want the police to know?" she asked savagely.
"Because he came from your apartment."
"How do you know he came from my apartment? I ain"t seen him in my house tonight."
"I did. I saw him fall out of your window."
"What? Oh, you"re talking about Reverend Short. And you sure enough seen him fall?"
"That"s what I"m telling you. And he"s lying down on the sidewalk in the A&P bread basket, dead as all h.e.l.l."
"That ain"t Reverend Short. He didn"t even get hurt. He come back upstairs."
The voice didn"t say anything, so she went on. "It"s Val. Valentine Haines. And he was stabbed to death."
She waited for an answer, but the voice still didn"t speak.
"h.e.l.lo," she said. "h.e.l.lo! You still there! You"re so G.o.ddam smart how come you didn"t see that?"
She heard a very soft click.
"The b.a.s.t.a.r.d hung up," she mumbled to herself, then added, "Now if that ain"t almighty strange--"
She stood still for a moment, trying to think, but her mind wouldn"t work. Then she crossed to the dressing table and picked up a can of snuff. Using a cotton dauber, she dipped a lipful, leaving the dauber in the pocket of her lip with the stick protruding. It quieted her growing sense of panic. Out of respect for her guests, she hadn"t taken a dip all night, and as a rule she lived with a dip in her lip.
"Lord, if Big Joe was alive, he"d know what to do," she said to herself as she went with slow, dragging steps back into the sitting room.
It was littered with dirty gla.s.ses and plates containing sc.r.a.ps of food, ashtrays overflowing with smoldering cigarette and cigar b.u.t.ts. The maroon-carpeted floor was a mess. Burning cigarettes had left holes in the upholstery, burned scars on the tabletops. The ashy skeleton of a cigarette lay intact atop the grand piano. There was a resemblance to a fairground after a circus has gone, and the smell of death and lilies of the valley and man-made stink was overpOWeflng in the hot, close room.
Mamie dragged herself across the room and looked down into the bronze-painted coffin at the body of her late husband.
Big Joe was dressed in a cream-colored Palm Beach suit, pale green crepe de Chine shirt, brown silk tie with hand-painted angels held in place by a diamond horseshoe stickpin. His big square dark-brown face was clean shaven, with deep creases encircling the wide mouth. It looked freshly ma.s.saged. His eyes were closed. His stiff gray kinky hair had been cut short after death and had been painstakingly combed and brushed. She had done it herself, and she had dressed him, too. His hands were folded across his chest, exhibiting a diamond ring on his left hand and his lodge signet ring on his right.
She removed all of the jewelry and put it down into the deep front pocket of her long black satin Mother Hubbard dress that swept the floor. Then she closed the coffin.
"One h.e.l.l of a wake this turned out to be," she said.