THE MISBEGOTTEN

Esau Gates

So now Bonnie Mae has come, probably still as pretty as a movie star.  Men never could leave her alone.  She never got enough of men neither I guess.  Running off to Memphis, to work in a café she says, but it isn’t what I heard last Monday, after Egg said he wouldn’t kill me.

I walk over to the poolroom and I hear some man say, “Good pussy!  By God, Mason,” he says to the guy and the man grins and says, “Are you sure?”  

The grinning guy says, “Of course I tell you she’s hustling on Mulberry Street.  Course now, I don’t buy the stuff,” he apologizes.

The other man, who is smoking a black cigar, says loudly, “Of course not!”  Then I knew and I knew that those letters to Mama with money wasn’t café money.  And so the rest of the day I wander all over town and then that night I go over to Mrs. Franford’s boarding house to see Nathan again.

“Egg,” I says to him as we come outta his house and up the street.  It’s all black cept for the corner light like a yellow steady bursting bomb hovering above.  “Egg,” I say, “Please, please, I can’t go on no more like this.”  And I feel my hands get sticky inside my pockets; and we pass alongside the rough, black, barked trees ... water oaks that line the lightless street and our shoes scrape, shuffle dissonantly the sidewalk concrete.

He says, “Maybe Esau, maybe tomorrow.  We’ll see how things turn out tonight.”

I say, “Whatcha mean Egg!”

And he says, “You’ll see,” and he reaches in the top of his shirt and pulls out a cigarette and the light flares like a curved white-red streak where from he strikes it on his trousers behind and he smokes and smokes; and we walk along and I say, “Let’s don’t get in no trouble.”

“We ain’t,” he says.

“Are ya sure?”

“Hell yes.  Gotdam Esau, I’m doing this for you!”

“Where’s Tommy? I ask. 

“I know he’ll be there,” Egg says, and blows the smoke out as he talks; and I look at the sleek Cadillac that slides past and think some rich goddamned planter: only people got money down here are the ones with land and it’s passed down so that if your folks haven’t anything, chances are you won’t have anything either.