Wolf Whistle Read Online Free PDF Page B

name.”
    The child said, “Bobo.”
    Solon said, “Bobo.”
    The child said, “Yeah.”
    Solon said, “Yeah.” Solon said, “Where-bouts do you live, Bobo?”
    The child said, “Chicago.”
    Solon said, “Chicken in the car and the car won’t go, that’s the way to spell Chi-car-go. Right?”
    Bobo said, “Huh?”
    Solon said, “That’s two
hubs
and
yeah,
Bobo.” He said, “Where do you stay?”
    Bobo said, “Uncle.”
    Solon said, “Listen here, Bobo. I want you to apologize to my friend here. I want you to apologize to this here white lady.” He motioned his head in the direction of Lady Montberclair. He said, “I want you to say ‘I’m sorry’ to this here good-looking white lady in her raincoat.”
    Lady Montberclair said, “Bobo, you go get in the car, right this minute. I mean it. I’ll drive you home.”
    She pushed her way past Solon Gregg, out the screened door, and so then Bobo slipped through, too, in the instant of daylight between Solon and the door, and flew down the porch steps and jumped in the front seat of Lady Montberclair’s Cadillac.
    Lady Montberclair got in the car in a hurry and didn’t wait for directions, she just drove away, towards a section of Arrow Catcher called the Belgian Congo, or sometimes just Niggertown. That’s where she thought Bobo must be staying, she didn’t catch on right away that Bobo’s uncle lived out on Runnymede.
    As the Cadillac pulled away, Solon turned back to theother men in the room. He said, “Settin up in that-air front seat like Cock-of-the-Roost.”
    Solon said, “Did you hear him out on that front porch, bragging about white women? Seem like I heard him say he was carrying a pitcher of a white woman in his wallet. Did anybody else hear him say that?”
    Red’s hair stood up straighter and more electric than usual. He said, “Well, now, welcome home, Solon, welcome home from the big N.O., boy, the Big Easy, the Land of Dreamy Dreams. Tell us all about it, son, have a little taste of Old Charter with the boys, Solon, why don’t you now. Let me crack you open one of these half-pints, do you some good, settle your nerves. Still Happy Hour, so the Co-Colas are free.” Happy Hour was early in the morning at Red’s Goodlookin Bar and Gro.
    Gilbert Mecklin, the housepainter, took out his half-pint again and uncapped it and chased down a snort of Four Roses with a little bit of Co-Cola. Gilbert had heard that New Orleans was below sea level and that all the graves were above ground. He said, “What about them durn graves, Solon? How do they dig a durn grave
above
the ground, is what I’d like to know. I never did understand that. Runt, you ought know something about this, in your line of work.”
    Runt Conroy had dug a few graves in the Delta, therewas no doubt about that, guilty as charged. He dug graves before there was machinery to dig graves with, when it was only a pick and shovel and zinc buckets on a rope to haul out the dirt.
    It was odd to Runt, though, that until right now, this minute, grave-digging had never seemed like a morbid occupation. Never a thought about who was going in the hole, or what would happen to them once they were down there.
    You’d think it might have troubled him from time to time, preparing final resting places. He had known some of the occupants of those graves, too, plenty of them, over the years. These weren’t faceless corpses to Runt, they were citizens of Arrow Catcher, Mississippi, his hometown.
    He dug his own mama’s grave, not too many years ago, with a backhoe. She died of a broken heart because Runt was such a failure in life. No woman could live long in the knowledge that her son was the gravedigger and town drunk in the sorriest little podunk excuse for a town in the sorriest state in the nation. That’s why she died,