shorts and sandals, who had already completed their shopping, stood in front of the market waiting for a bus to take them back home. The parking lot was completely full, and some of the vehicles belonged to the police.
The men who worked inside were running around with bloodstains on their white smocks. Sweaty, impatient customers were standing at the counters five deep trying to bargain, trying to get credit, or trying to get an extra pound of something for free.
Because of all the chaos and the fact that it took Mr. Boatwright so long to walk from one counter to another, (he had to lean against the wall and rest for ten minutes between each counter we went to) it took us longer than we expected to get our orders filled. By the time we walked out of the market, there were so many people ahead of us boarding the departing bus we had to wait for the next one. It took us another hour to get back to where we had to transfer to the bus that would take us back to our neighborhood. By then it was too late. The last bus for the day on that route had come and gone.
“I guess we’ll have to take a cab from here,” Mr. Boatwright said angrily.
“Let’s walk the rest of the way home,” I suggested. Our house was fifteen blocks away, but I didn’t mind.
“What’s wrong with you, girl? I’m lucky to be alive after all the walkin’ I done did today,” Mr. Boatwright snapped. There were times I forgot about his fake leg and the fact that he was an old man. “All these packages we totin’ too. Let’s get to that pay phone yonder and call a cab.” The nearby pay phone at the corner in front of Thurman’s Pharmacy was out of order. “Maybe that drugstore there got one. Start steppin’, girl.”
I followed Mr. Boatwright inside the drugstore. While he went to the back to use the phone, I waited on a stool at the soda counter with our packages, enjoying the air-conditioning and a strawberry milk shake.
A well-dressed Black man in his mid-forties entered. With his head held high and his shoulders back, he strutted like a king, greeting some of the other customers with a nod and a smile. He was tall like my daddy, but much more handsome. He looked a lot like Mama’s favorite entertainer, Harry Belafonte. He had dark brown skin, full lips, wavy black hair, and, of all things, green eyes. He nodded and smiled at me, revealing a set of dazzling white teeth. I smiled back and watched him stop at the counter in back of the drugstore where they filled prescriptions. Mr. Boatwright returned with a tortured look on his face.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“We ain’t got enough to cover no cab from here to the house. Damn that bus!” he hissed. “I guess—” he stopped and shaded his eyes. He was looking at the Black man with the movie-star looks. “Ain’t that Brother Nelson yonder there?”
“Who?”
“The undertaker that own that big white house directly across the street from us. He come up to me when I was in the yard the other day and introduced hisself,” Mr. Boatwright explained. We watched the man walk toward us, still smiling. He reached out and shook Mr. Boatwright’s hand so hard I thought Mr. Boatwright was going to fall.
“How’re you feelin’, Boatwright?” the man drawled in a deep, husky, slightly Southern accent. “It’s good to see you again.”
I pushed my milk shake aside and leaped up off my seat, smoothing the sides of my cheap corduroy jumper.
“Oh I’m fair to middlin’. The Lord’s good to me, Brother Nelson.” Mr. Boatwright nodded in my direction. “This the young’n live in the same house with me and her mama. I know you done seen her up and down that tree shuckin’ it for them buckeye nuts. Annette, this Brother Nelson.”
“Hi, Mr. Nelson,” I said shyly.
He shook my trembling hand. “I got a girl around your age. She’s spendin’ her summer vacation with her aunt down South,” Mr. Nelson told me. “Uh…look like you folks got a lot of shoppin’ done there.”
“Yep. We been to the slaughterhouse out on Highway 80. We can’t afford them high-and-mighty prices at Kroger’s and the A&P like you. Me and this girl here go to the slaughterhouse two, three times a month. Even Kroger’s can’t beat them screamin’, meaty pork ribs the slaughterhouse sell, praise the Lord.” Mr. Boatwright laughed, shaking his head.
“Well I wouldn’t know. We don’t eat pork,” Mr. Nelson informed us with a serious look on his face. “You know, Black folks would be a whole lot healthier if they’d give up certain things, especially pork.”
I bobbed my head up and down in agreement. “I read about it in that Black Muslim newspaper they go around selling. They say too much pork can kill you,” I offered.
Mr. Boatwright rolled his eyes at me and sighed with exasperation. “Well mighty funny you wanted to stand in that long line just to get them pork link sausages,” he teased. “That’s why we missed the last bus, and now we ain’t got no way to get home lest we call the po’lice,” Mr. Boatwright complained. He immediately turned to Mr. Nelson and looked at him with pleading eyes.
“I’m goin’ in your direction. Y’all welcome to ride along with me,” Mr. Nelson told us, opening his arms like he was going to hug somebody.
Mr. Boatwright couldn’t gather our packages fast enough. There was a shiny black Cadillac parked in front of the drugstore. The same car I’d seen in front of the undertaker’s house. Mr. Boatwright jumped in the front, all the while complaining about his leg, and I got in the back.
“How your family doin’? Scary Mary tells me you got your hands full,” Mr. Boatwright boomed, drowning out Miles Davis coming from the tape deck.
“Well, that woman of mine is goin’ to force me into the poorhouse. That hardheaded boy of mine is drivin’ me crazy. He and his sister fight like a cat and dog. That’s why we shipped her to her auntie this summer.”
“How your mama? I hear she’s havin’ some health difficulties,” Mr. Boatwright grunted, looking with envy at the undertaker’s well-groomed hair.
“Well, Alzheimer’s is pretty serious, but we manage to live with it. She’s a handful though. We can’t keep a nurse more than a few weeks. That’s why I let that crazy half brother of mine move in, so he can help look after her. And, as you probably heard, my wife is not well, or at least she doesn’t think she is. Every other day I drop off a new prescription.”
“Well, I be seein’ your wife in the yard wrestlin’ with them rosebushes y’all got, and comin’ and goin’ with shoppin’ bags from every store in town every day. She look mighty healthy to me,” Mr. Boatwright said seriously, still staring at the undertaker’s hair, blinking fast and hard.
“She cut her finger on a steak knife the other day and took to her bed, certain she was goin’ to get infected. Today it’s a cramp in her foot.” Mr. Nelson laughed.
I sat in silence while Mr. Boatwright and Mr. Nelson talked. As soon as we got home, Mr. Boatwright started badmouthing Mr. Nelson.
“We don’t eat pork,” he mimicked. “Hmmmph! I bet he’d eat pork iffen he didn’t have nothin’ else to eat. And what he need with a car that big? Iffen I had a wife like his’n, always whinin’ about a cut or a scratch or cramps, I’d slap her!”
“Mr. Nelson seems like a real nice man,” I said casually. We were putting the meat away. I kept the pork links out so that I could eat a snack before dinner. “He doesn’t look like an undertaker,” I added thoughtfully.
“And just what is a undertaker supposed to look like?” Mr. Boatwright sniffed, shaking a pack of chicken wings in my direction, his other hand on his hip.
“Well…you know…grim, heavyset, spooky. The way you—” I covered my mouth with my hand. Mr. Boatwright looked at me like he wanted to slap me, but he didn’t.
“I bet he ain’t half the man I am, iffen you know what I mean. Scary Mary say he got a balled-up sock stuffed in his crotch.” Mr. Boatwright laughed.
“And