Corregidora (Bluestreak) Read Online Free PDF Page A

back. Leastwise you like what you do.”
    “Yeah, I like it … There’s always something you can do to keep your own hours.”
    “Now we ain’t talking about that.”
    I laughed. “Well …”
    “Hush.”
    She sat down in the chair next to the front-room door.
    “I suppose I don’t mind what I do. It ain’t like when I was young though, you know.”
    “You don’t seem old.”
    “I don’t know too many people that seem old … Well, I better get up from here and leave you alone. Talking about niggers bothering you.” She got up again. “Something I can get you?”
    “Naw, thanks.”
    “Well, I let you rest. If you wont something, just holler.”
    I said I would.
    “He leave you alone, didn’t he?”
    “Who?”
    “Tadpole.”
    “Yeah, he left me alone.” I frowned at her. She frowned back, and closed the door again. Then she peeped back in the door.
    “What the doctor say you can eat?”
    “Anything.”
    “I fry you some chicken then for supper.”
    “Good.”
    She closed the door.
    I settled back in the double bed, and pulled the covers up to my neck. The bed was high and it was a large empty room, except for a cedar chest and a wardrobe. There was a window facing the street, with dingy white-lace curtains. I slept.
    I woke up to the smell of scorched hair and fried chicken. There was a tap on the door. I said, “Come in.” It was Jeffy.
    “Miss Catherine wonts to know how much do you think you can eat?”
    “A couple of pieces.”
    “That all?”
    “I think so.”
    “What part do you wont?”
    “It don’t matter.”
    She closed the door, but not all the way.
    “I wont you to take some across the road to Tadpole and down home to your mama, you hear? This bag’s Tadpole’s and this bag’s your mama’s. And don’t eat none on the way.”
    “Yes’m.”
    The screen door banged.
    Cat came in with a plate with two pieces of chicken, a wing and a breast, and mashed potatoes and peas and cornbread.
    “I can’t eat all that much,” I said.
    “Well, try.”
    “I thought you just meant a couple of pieces of chicken.”
    “Well, you got to have stuff to go with it.”
    I sat up in bed and she put a cloth across my legs and the plate on the cloth.
    “Thank you.”
    She went and sat down on the cedar chest.
    “You ate?” I asked.
    “Yeah, we awready ate. I looked in before and you was sleeping so hard I didn’t wont to wake you.”
    “This is good.”
    “Thank you.”
    I ate for a few moments in silence, grease on my fingers. It was good to get real food again. My stomach had started caving in.
    “You know, every time I cook fried chicken I think of that time Joe Hunn and me was married. My brother-in-law invited us over to a after-wedding supper. He wasn’t married hisself so he cooked it up hisself. He started cooking it when we got there and then said dinner was ready and seem like to me it couldn’t a been more than fifteen minutes, but I didn’t say nothing. And then we sat down to eat, and I bit down on a piece and it had blood coming out of it. And Gus, that’s his brother, was just saying, ‘Good, ain’t it?’ and Joe was saying, ‘Yeah.’ I didn’t know if Joe was crazy too or just didn’t wont to ’fend him. But I put mine back down on the plate and said, ‘I don’t know about y’all, but this going back in the skillet.’ So they let me put theirs back in the skillet too. If they’d have started laughing, I would have sweared it was a joke, but they didn’t even crack a smile. Up to the day we separated, I never would let Joe Hunn fry me no chicken.”
    I laughed.
    She said, “Here I am talking about that chicken and you trying to eat. I wasn’t thinking I might upset your stomach.”
    “Naw, you didn’t upset it.”
    “Well, I be in the house if you wont anything. You wont another piece of chicken?”
    “Naw thanks, this is fine.”
    “I don’t wont to worry you out of my own house. Call me when you through.”
    I said I would.
    Her chicken was