And I Said No Lord: A Twenty-One-Year-Old in Mississippi in 1964

2. At RC's: Community Institutions: Cafe, Barber Shop, Pool Hall, Church

37 2at rc’s community institutions: cafe, barber shop, pool hall, church 38 After ordering my dinner I sat down at a table with two silent men in the dark cafe. Soon after I began to eat, an ancient woman walked in painfully, a halo of bristling hair fanning out from her skull like gray flames, wearing a once-white dress with a pattern of perforations and a tan waist apron with a litter of laughing puppies frolicking around the frilly bottom of it. She came up to me and said something I didn’t understand, then sat down at my left and mumbled something to the two men. “Maybe she’s drunk,” one of them said. The other got up and brought her over a shot of whiskey, which she gulped down and followed with a few swallows of beer left in a used glass. She talked to me, but I couldn’t understand anything. She swiveled around in her chair and held out the bottom of her apron to show me the puppies, smiled, then grasped and held my knee hard, her eyes yellowed with red veins. One of the men called her over, but she appeared not to hear and didn’t move. With a furious lunge of her hand, she suddenly pushed two glasses over the edge of the table. At the noise of the breaking glass, one of the men started toward her. With another ferocious sweep of her arm the other glasses and two quart bottles of beer shattered on the floor. The man reached for her and grabbed her by the shoulders. She swung around violently, jabbing at him with the points of her elbows. Almost 39 “What’s the matter?” “Sleeeeepy, drowsy, you know, fell asleep.” David was wearing ballooning brown shorts under his red shirt and black-and-white moccasin shoes, one of which was untied. He scampered around dropping pennies into the pinball machines. His father bought him game after game, and a group of older boys gathered around, watching him and cheering him on. He alternated his serious playing with jumping off his chair in front of the machine nearer the door, hitting or kicking the other machine on the leg, looking around furtively, and returning to his perch on the chair. The man in the straw hat got up and returned with a glass of beer. He asked my name. I told him, and he told me his: Ray Carter. He went over to refill the jukebox and resumed his seat, singing, tapping his foot, and swaying his body to the music, his voice a deep, muscular, and slightly rasping bass, an octave below the bass of the singer. I asked him how old he thought David was. “Two,” he said; I guessed four. We went over together and asked the woman. “David? He’ll be three in December.” “You win,” I told Ray. He offered me a beer, addressing me by name. I asked him if he lived in the neighborhood. “Yeah. I got a son about his age. I live down the street when I get out of jail.” I looked up questioningly. Pleased with my reaceveryone in the cafe was awake and watching. Easily, the man twisted a skinny arm behind her back. She made no sound but simply, and with what dignity her pinioned arm allowed her, rose from the chair. The man led her to the front door, where he was joined by another man. They pushed her out onto the sidewalk and held the screen door shut from the inside by the wooden crosspiece as she tried to get back in, hammering on the screen and kicking the frame. She passed the window, wandered up the street, and disappeared. A family dressed in red was sitting at a table behind me, the woman wearing a red dress, the man and their son red shirts, man and wife each with a quart of beer. The man kept offering me a beer or soft drink, which I refused. I made funny faces for the little boy, who wriggled shyly and happily up into his father’s lap and around and under the protection of his arm. David was the boy’s name; he had a wonderful brown face. He and his father, whose teeth were half gold, played over a nickel and some pennies. A big, handsome man in a wide straw...