Ms. Etta's Fast House Read online

  “Well, that rules out any niggers getting in!” smarted off a redneck close to the front of the crowd.

  The police chief chuckled until he felt his boss’s glare burning a hole in him. “Okay, keep it down!” he fired back, with a hint of laughter riding just beneath it. “Deputy Mayor,” said the chief, giving a slight nod to get the show moving again.

  “As I was saying, I will read off the twelve names. These men will be expected to report for orientation on Wednesday morning at the Police Training Facility, nine o’clock sharp.” Jimmy Maxwell’s was the first name he read aloud. When no one seemed to object or applaud, the politician continued until there were six names left. He hesitated briefly to brace himself before going on. “The other six cadets will be as follows—James Dodd, Trace Wiggins, Willie B. Bernard, Charles Tennyson, Patton Jones and Henry Taylor.” As cheers erupted on one side of the fence, twice as many jeers resounded from the other. Shoving and bickering quickly escalated into inflammatory insults hurled back and forth. Then out of nowhere, someone threw a full soda bottle into the riotous group.

  The deputy mayor shuddered. He panicked when angry fists flew wildly. “Do something about this, chief!” he instructed hastily before darting back inside the building to elude danger.

  After receiving the go-ahead, police officers stormed the audience to stifle the melée. They wielded night sticks violently, cracking heads without regard. Flashbulbs popped as newspaper cameramen captured the city’s ugliest incident in years.

  Charles “Smiley” Tennyson, having been near the last one named on the list, gulped hard as he observed the mad brawl. “Is that what we got to look forward to?”

  “Nah, not unless you plan on trying your luck with some of that civil disobedience,” Trace said.

  “But Willie B’s over there putting his up against those nightsticks. This is bad, real bad. Let’s mix in and grab him up.”

  “Hell, naw, just sit still. Willie B. done made his bed. He’ll figure a way out of this jam. Besides, it’s way too many white ladies over there to make arrests stick.”

  Trace couldn’t believe his eyes. He removed his bifocals, folded and tucked them away. “Man, the way they breaking heads, I can barely stand to watch.”

  “You ain’t seen the half of it yet,” Henry informed him. “It’ll get a lot worse before things iron out. Trust me.” He tried to turn his eyes away once he recognized several people he’d grown up with being dragged from the bloody sidewalks and hoisted into paddywagons like career criminals. Surprisingly, it was just as difficult watching the same happen to battered and bruised white folk he’d never met. The enormity of what he signed up to do smacked him like the wooden baton he’d soon be asked to carry, when all he set out to do was earn an honest wage and feed his family. Igniting a brutal incident on the shores of the Mississippi was the farthest thing from his mind then.

  Now, he could think of nothing else, knowing that the others would not have gone forward without him. Henry felt as if every drop of blood spilled on the city sidewalk was on his hands. What’s more, he knew it was only the beginning. “Come on, y’all!” he barked when the men began drifting toward the fight. “I said, hightail it outta here before you get sucked in, hired and fired all in the same day.” Begrudgingly, the four men chose the road less traveled, with dubious feeling. It wasn’t every day that colored men got the chance to rumble on the courthouse steps against white men who had openly engaged in hatred and bigotry to their faces. Each one of them went home feeling as though they had missed out on a one in a million chance.

  It was late afternoon when Etta finally got Baltimore to return her calls and he was wearing an icepack for a hat when he did. He asked if anything had happened during his novice attempt at drowning sorrows. In addition, he was willing to apologize for misbehaving if it turned out to be the case. Etta laughed. She told him there wasn’t anything to be sorry about. On the other hand, she would need him to help square an issue with Penny. Alarmed, Baltimore sat up on his bed and then snatched the melting ice away. Etta had to calm him down before he allowed her to explain that he had done nothing wrong to bring about Penny’s situation. Finally relieved, Baltimore listened attentively to all that Etta had to say. He agreed wholeheartedly and then thanked her for including him. Penny’s welfare meant a lot and before long Etta’s would too, just as much.

  When Baltimore found Jinx toiling in some white man’s yard in the far end of town, he shook his head disapprovingly. He parked the car next to the curb, not lending much to what the man’s neighbors might report to him when he came home from work. It was still a free country, on paper mostly, and he felt free to park his car wherever he got good and ready. “Uh-huh,” yelled Baltimore from the driver’s seat. He frowned at the patches of grass Jinx had ripped from the lawn. “Etta told me I’d find you around these parts on your knees and such.”

  “Hey, Baltimo’!” the younger man hollered back. Jinx climbed to his feet and dusted off his brown work pants. He always respected Baltimore and admired him for his brash way of doing things, although it made Jinx nervous as hell the way he carried himself around white people. It was more dangerous than it was crazy, he thought, but admired it nonetheless.

  “What you doing up in that man’s yard?” Baltimore teased.

  Jinx raised his hand to shield his face from the sun. “Don’t rightly know yet. Landscapin’, I guess.”

  “Land scraping is more like it. That fella’s gonna get you for plucking up his grounds. Somebody needs to fetch you away from here before he catches you.” Of course Baltimore knew the young man was scratching out a living the best way he could on short notice, but that didn’t stop him from poking fun before time came to unload some difficult news. “All right. Don’t mind me, Jinx. I’m ribbing is all.”

  “I ain’t stud’n you, Baltimo’. I know you’s just around to have a good time with me,” Jinx replied, as his smile melted slightly. “Unless they’s something else on your mind.”

  “Well, now that you mention it, there is this one thing I need you to help me with,” Baltimore said, looking past him as another thing caught his eye. There was a woman, a white woman, strutting around in the backyard in a two-piece bathing suit. She knew that colored men were watching when she seductively began applying tanning oil on her arms and legs. Although Baltimore tried to ignore her midday sunbath, there was no way to shake it off. There was something strangely familiar about her, but he couldn’t place her.

  “Okay, shoot. I ain’t got much, but whatever it is, I’m willing to lend a hand,” answered Jinx. He was facing Baltimore and itching to hear what the man traveled across town to ask him. “Well, what is it?”

  “First, let me thank you for helping me put Penny’s old papa in the ground. But see, here’s the thing I was getting at. Etta wants to have a ceremony. You know, for Penny. She’s having a tough time moving on and saying farewell because she didn’t have the chance to before ...”

  “Yeah, yeah, anything for Penny,” he answered, sort of perplexed about what was going on behind him. When he couldn’t shake the distinct feeling gnawing at him to turn around and get a look at what kept drawing Baltimore’s attention away, Jinx peeped over his shoulder. “Ah, naw, naw,” he uttered, trying to keep his voice low. “Uh-uh, Baltimo’, I see it and I don’t like it. That look in your eyes and what you’s thinking on doing is gonna get you killed.”

  Baltimore grinned when he remembered where he’d seen that lady before. “Calm down, Jinx, it’ll be all right after a while.”

  “You done gone crazy? That’s a white lady. She respectable and she married,” he argued. “And ... and she white!”

  “I can see that, Jinx, but ain’t neither of ’em got nothing to do with me,” Baltimore said coolly, not taking his eyes of the woman’s pasty skin turning redder by the moment. “She’s married, I’ll grant you that, but I’m a have to get back with you on the respectable part.” He motioned forward to get closer to the skimpy swimsuit but Jinx grabbed his
arm.

  “Come on, let’s skin out and take care of that thing you came to fetch me for.”

  “Huh?” was Baltimore’s faint response.

  “Halstead, remember?”

  “I can’t do nothing for Halstead. He’s already dead.”

  “I know and we got to bury him right, for Penny,” Jinx said, hoping to save someone the trouble of throwing dirt over Baltimore. “Baltimo’, for Penny?” he insisted quietly.

  “All right, Jinx, let’s be getting on then. You’re a good man. Penny’s lucky to have a friend like you.”

  “I’m a good pal of yours, too,” Jinx sighed wearily, while settling into the passenger seat. “If you was to know what I do about that woman’s husband, you’d be thanking me for holding you off.”

  “And if you was to know anything about women in general, you wouldn’t be so quick to go patting yourself on the back. Me and her, we got the same idea in mind,” he added with a sly wink. “We both share a fondness for intrigue and a broad dislike for her husband, Barker Sinclair.” Once the car pulled onto the residential street, Jinx felt like sliding down in the seat to hide his identity. For even thinking about going after Dixie, wife of the meanest white man he’d ever seen, Jinx assumed Baltimore had to be crazy, and stupid.

  Two blocks from the hospital, Baltimore noticed several groups milling around on the sidewalks, most of them crying and cursing. He didn’t know what to make of it as police cars and ambulances raced past with sirens blaring. “What the hell?” he muttered to himself when discovering that the hospital parking entrance was blocked by a squadron of patrol cars. After a large corn-fed cop waved a baton, telling him to move along, he made a swift U-turn in the middle of the avenue. “Stay here, Jinx,” he murmured sternly. “I knew this would happen, just didn’t think they’d get into it this fast.”

  Baltimore marched across the street with long strides. He didn’t even blink when the big officer glared at him with cold menacing eyes. Strapped with a .45 caliber charmer in the shoulder holster beneath his suit coat, Baltimore wasn’t afraid to gun the man down if he tried to keep him away. Determined to see if Henry was involved in the event that probably had the entire hospital personnel hopping, he pushed his way through the mob of people.

  Just inside the emergency room entrance, Baltimore approached the registration desk. “Miss, I know you’re busy but I need something,” he said to the frumpy duty nurse behind the waist high counter. Then, he noted the check-in area was littered with injured patients moaning, bleeding and carrying on about being innocent and getting clubbed half to death. She glanced up at him, expecting to see another victim of the brutal incident. When her assumption proved incorrect, she frowned and quickly went back to her paperwork.

  “Yes, sir, you’re right about that. I am very busy and everybody here needs something,” she answered. “Now unless you’re standing there with an injury that I can’t see, please step aside.”

  Baltimore grimaced and checked his watch. “Okay, okay, I don’t have time to fuss. Is Dinah Leonard still on duty?”

  “Don’t rightly know, but if she is, she’s just as busy as me, that I’m sure of,” she told him matter-of-factly. “Since you can’t seem to take a hint and I’m weary from giving them, why’ont you go on up to the second floor and look for Nurse Leonard there?”

  “Thank you, miss,” offered Baltimore as he stepped past her.

  “And you’re welcome, sir,” she replied before yelling “Next!” above the noise.

  After he’d taken the stairs up to the second floor, the woman he’d met at Ms. Etta’s Fast House exited a patient’s room while reading a chart. Her uniform was spic and span although her anxiety shone through. “Baltimore, what are you doing here?” Dinah asked, more surprised than excited to see him. “I wasn’t supposed to see you until dinner tonight. I’ll be needin’ some special attention myself by then.”

  “I’ll bet. I was on my way to a meeting when I ran up on a passel of people looking like they been to war and didn’t win.”

  “Yeah, we’ve been spilling over since that fight broke out at the courthouse,” she said, as if it was common knowledge.

  “So that’s where it went down,” Baltimore sighed, with a faraway gaze in his eyes. “When are Negroes gon’ learn that white folk don’t want us sharing in what they got a lock on?”

  “Don’t ask me, but it appears we’re trying to get it unlocked but fast. I’ve heard that four or five colored men passed that police test.”

  “Seems like that lock just got busted clean off,” he replied, glancing at his watch again. “Look, Dinah, I need to know where to find M.K ... uh, Dr. Phipps.”

  “I could tell you, but you can’t get up to see him. Dr. Phipps is knee-deep in broken bones, scrapes and stitches right about now, likely will be for the rest of the day too. Baltimore, I’d love to talk some more but I got to go.”

  “I understand, Dinah, I understand. I was just wonderin’—” he said, before realizing she had disappeared down the hall. He wandered out of the building reluctantly, without knowing if Henry was badly hurt or worse, dead.

  Already on his way to a funeral as it was, Baltimore couldn’t see going to another one in the same week. Henry had better be all right, he thought to himself as he climbed back inside his convertible. But his attitude was severely distorted when Jinx asked what all of the commotion was about. “Nothing, Jinx,” he answered, through clenched teeth. “Some of your friends wanting to be cops got a lot of people’s heads broke is all.” There was nothing else to be said about that. Baltimore’s intense scowl made that crystal clear to Jinx.

  12

  GOODBYE AND GOOD RIDDANCE

  On his way to honor a man he couldn’t stand, Baltimore pulled his car over on the shoulder of the street a half-mile before taking the dusty unpaved farm road leading to Jinx’s property. “Latch the rag top on your side for me,” was all he managed to say before subjecting his slick automobile to red clay and pebbles. There was no way he’d let farm living get inside his prized coupe. It was bad enough that he’d have to get it washed and waxed after the dirt settled on his paint job. Penny’s safety and well-being meant that much to him and more.

  After he guided his car down a long narrow path and over a wooden bridge, Baltimore steered inside a barbed wire fence. Drawing near to Jinx’s house, which was a rickety old two bedroom shack sitting atop concrete blocks, he saw an old woman sitting in a brand new rocking chair with two large mutts resting at her feet. Jinx’s mother, wearing a long faded duster and a wrinkled bonnet tied under her sagging chin, rolled back and forth with the calm breeze sweeping across the porch. She didn’t have words for him as she cradled a large corncob pipe with her right hand and just nodded hello as Baltimore killed the engine. He was a stranger, one she didn’t trust. One she saw bringing trouble to her front door and a world of change to her son.

  “Afternoon, ma’am,” Baltimore greeted the woman, who didn’t bother to look his way. She acted as if he didn’t even exist, although pretending wouldn’t make it so.

  “Hey, Muh’dear, we came to finish up back yonder,” said Jinx, as if she’d questioned him about being home in the middle of the day.

  “Jinxy,” she answered softly, before climbing off the rocker and disappearing inside the dingy colored house. Whatever he and that fancy stranger were up to, she didn’t want to watch them going about it.

  Baltimore lifted his Stetson hat to allow the cool wind to blow through his thick curly hair. “Man, it sho’ is getting warm. Etta and them need to hurry up so we can get this over with.” No sooner than he said it, a dark-colored four-door sedan came storming up the road.

  “That appears to be them now,” said Jinx, craning his neck to see over the horizon. “Looks like Reverend Foxmore’s car. He wouldn’t be coming out here ’less Ms. Etta was bringing him.”

  “All right then, this is how we’ll handle it. I’ll stall them, talk to the preacher and slip him a few bills so’s he’ll say something
respectful, while you hurry on back there and smooth out the mound. Make sure it looks nice and kept, like somebody actually gave a damn.”

  Jinx agreed to do it for Penny and then made himself scarce. “Gimme five minutes, if you can,” he requested, jogging briskly in the opposite direction.

  When three car doors slammed, Baltimore grunted with a manufactured smile on his face. “Hey, y’all,” he hailed, waving to Penny, Etta and a middle-aged man with a limp, dressed in a well-worn black suit.

  “Hi ya, Baltimore. I didn’t know Jinx’s people lived way out here,” answered Etta with Penny following closely behind her. As her head hung low, Baltimore was reminded how young and simple she was, regardless of how much polishing Etta had done.

  “Hey, Mistah Baltimore,” the young girl said, her eyes still cast toward the ground.

  “Come over here. I brought along Reverend Foxmore,” Etta said, her voice as shaky as the old house. “He’s going to preside over the services. Reverend, meet a dear friend of mine, Baltimore Floyd.” When the man of God extended his hand, Baltimore threw his arm around the thick brown-skinned fellow’s shoulder instead.

  “I want to take a minute and talk to you. See, look here. The man you’s about to preside over was the nastiest rabble-rouser there ever was, including the peoples in that bible you carrying, but his daughter is two wings shy of an angel. I care about her and if you know what’s good for you, you’d better say something comforting so she can get on with her life.” Baltimore pushed a twenty dollar bill into the man’s coat pocket to seal the deal. “I figure it all oughtta take about fifteen to twenty minutes altogether. But whatever you do—”

  “Sorry, Rev’n. Baltimo’ we’s got a problem,” Jinx interrupted abruptly. He’d kept his voice low so the ladies wouldn’t be alarmed at what he had to say next. “The body’s gone.”