Joy. Marsha Hunt

B is funny about borrowing and though he’s quick to lend, I ain’t never known him borrow off nobody but his eldest brother Harold who had a chicken farm in Louisiana and did not bad and loaned us the money in ’49 to get to California. So it didn’t surprise me all that much when Freddie give me a funny look over the top of his spectacles like he do when he’s fixing to lay into me about something. But first he stuck a pinch of snuff in his bottom lip and hawked a big spit in that aluminum can I keep for him down by the table leg, since he always takes him a wad of snuff in the morning. My baby sister’s the same.

      ‘After all these years of paying my dues on time,’ Freddie B said, ‘I figure I can borrow some off the union. Maybe not enough to get us both back East, but sure enough they’ll lend me fare for one, ’cause this is a emergency.’ That was his way of telling me that I wasn’t calling no Sebastian Egerton, and slow as Freddie B is to getting things said most times, the words spill out his mouth quick when he ain’t in the mood to be disagreed with.

      With my husband creeping through his whole life like a snail, I used to ponder how he managed to keep up at work. But my brother Caesar once told me that Freddie B had him a fine reputation on a industrial site Freddie’d got Caesar some work at one time. Caesar said Freddie was known not for fast bricklaying but for bricking sure, so’s when he did something, that foreman didn’t never need somebody to follow behind to rebrick a second time.