I drove out to the store where I figured Bonbon was waiting for me. He came out and told me to move over, and he got under the steering wheel. We hadn’t gone a quarter of a mile before I saw Pauline walking ’side the road. She was in pink and she had on her big white straw hat. Bonbon stopped the truck and I got out so Pauline could sit in the middle.
“How’s it going?” I asked, when we started moving again.
“Burning up,” she said.
She glanced at Bonbon but neither one of them said anything. She even sat a little closer to me than she did to him.
So that’s why he needed me, that’s why he wanted me to go with them. Not that a white man couldn’t ride all over the South with a black woman, but if they were traveling in daytime by themselves, the black woman had to look like she was either going to work or coming from work. It wouldn’t be safe for her to be dressed like Pauline was now or to have that powder smelling on her breast like Pauline did now. No, they wouldn’t say anything to Bonbon; they probably wouldn’t say anything to Pauline in front of Bonbon. But if they caught her by herself they would definitely remind her to never do it again. And sometimes they reminded you in ways you could never forget.
So that’s why they needed me. She was my wife, not his woman. And nobody was going to ask any questions. Even if they knew better they wouldn’t ask any questions now.
Bonbon drove about seventy all the way into Baton Rouge. The only time he slowed up was when he came up behind another car. Then soon as he saw daylight he shot around the car and hit seventy again. He and Pauline didn’t exchange two words. Pauline glanced at him every now and then when she thought he was going too fast. Once when Bonbon cursed a man for driving too slow, Pauline looked at Bonbon and went, “My, my.” Then she looked at me and smiled. She smiled the way a wife smiles after telling-off her husband.
When we came into Baton Rouge, Bonbon went by the hardware store and bought a little piece of iron so little that Tite could have come and gotten it by herself. Then he parked the truck in a parking lot while I went shopping with Pauline. I’m not one of these people who like to shop—I even hate to buy a loaf of bread—but I liked walking around with Pauline. I liked watching her walk in front of me down the store aisles. I liked seeing her pick up things and lay them back down carefully and neatly when she didn’t care for them. She had that quality, that real woman quality, that made you like being with her.
“How do you like this?” she asked me. She was holding up a white scarf with polka dots.
“It’s beautiful,” the white salesgirl said.
Pauline smiled at her respectfully, but she still looked at me. She wanted me to tell her how I thought Sidney Bonbon was going to like the scarf.
“Nice,” I said.
When we came to the stockings, she said, “Like these?”
I looked at the stockings and looked down at her legs. “Yep. Very much,” I said.
Pauline smiled at me. The little white salesgirl glanced down at Pauline’s legs and didn’t raise her head for a while. When you looked at Pauline’s legs and looked at her legs you could see why she wasn’t in a hurry to look up. Pauline bought a belt for Bonbon, then we left. When we got back to the truck, Bonbon was asleep. His white cowboy hat was pulled over his face.
“Hi,” Pauline said.
Bonbon pushed the cowboy hat back and looked at us.
“Make it back, huh?” he said, sitting up.
We got into the truck. Pauline gave Bonbon the little white box with the belt. He opened the box and looked at the belt, then he reached over to put it in the dash drawer.
“Ain’t you putting it on?” Pauline said. She was acting just like a wife again.
He didn’t answer her. I saw the forty-five in the dash drawer when the door popped open. Bonbon put the belt in there and slammed the door back.
“Where we go?” he said.
“Home,” Pauline said, like she was mad.
Bonbon looked at me. “Geam?”
“I’m with y’all,” I said.
“Y’all didn’t talk?”
I waited for Pauline to answer.
“We talked,” she said, looking at him like she was mad. “I asked Jim how he liked my stockings, how he liked my scarf. I bought some things for the children and I asked him how he liked that. I asked him how he liked your belt. He said he liked all of them.”
Bonbon squinted down at Pauline from under that cowboy hat. You could tell that Pauline wasn’t giving him the answers he wanted to hear. Pauline started looking out at the other cars on the parking lot. Bonbon just kept on looking down at her. I sat against the door, waiting. I hoped they wouldn’t start anything. That was something I didn’t want to be around.
“Geam, you know a good place we can drink?” Bonbon asked me.
“I think so.”
Bonbon paid the parking lot attendant and drove out on the street. We found a bar where a lot of mulattoes hung out. The bar was cool and dark. We sat at a table against the wall and I ordered a set-up. The set-up was a pint of whiskey, a bowl of ice, and a pitcher of water. The waitress brought it over. She was one of those pretty Creole gals with a lot of that jet black hair hanging over her shoulders. When I paid her I looked up at her cream-color face, and she smiled back at me. I told her to keep the change. She nodded and left.
“Lover-boy,” Pauline said.
“She’s pretty,” I said.
I opened the pint of whiskey and set it on the table. Bonbon didn’t look like he was going to fix a drink for him or Pauline, so I asked Pauline if she wanted me to fix her one. She said yes, and I fixed it and handed it to her. She nodded and said it was just right.
“Fix you one?” I asked Bonbon.
“Yeah,” he said.
I fixed it and Pauline handed it to him. He didn’t say thanks or anything. He drank and set the glass on the table. His white cowboy hat was on the table, too.
I fixed a drink for myself and took a good swallow.
“Ah, this is the life,” I said.
I thought this would get a conversation going, but nothing happened. All three of us just sat there looking at the other people in the place. You had some black skin in there, but most of them were mulattoes. I supposed they took Bonbon for a mulatto, too. He was darker than many of them.
We finished one drink and started another one. Pauline tried to start a conversation with Bonbon, but he just sat there looking at the other people. I remembered he had brought the gun out of the truck with him. You could see the print of it stuck under his shirt. He needed it everywhere he went. He needed it around his own Cajuns, he needed it around the Negroes in the field, and even needed it around these mulattoes who didn’t know him at all. He was a man who needed a gun no matter where he was.
“Hi,” Pauline said softly to him.
Bonbon didn’t look at her. He was still looking at the other people in the place.
“Hi,” she said, softly again.
He looked at her from the side. She put her small hand on his big hand that was holding the glass. Then she started rubbing her finger over his wrist. She said something to him very softly and he leaned over to hear what she had said. She made him lean even closer to her so she could whisper in his ear. She put her hand on his shoulder and whispered in his ear a long time. Then he picked up his glass and drank. She kept on looking at him. She looked at him so long he had to look back at her again. He didn’t look straight at her, he looked at her from the side. But even from that side glance you could see how much he cared for her. For a second there they looked at each other like they were the only two people in the place. Just him and her in this cool, dark place, all by themselves.
I moved my chair back and that broke the spell. That reminded him of everything. That reminded him that he was white and she was black. That reminded him of the mulattoes in the place. That reminded him of the white people outside who didn’t go for this kind of mixing in public.
“Where you going, Geam?” he said.
“Down the block a piece. I know a gal down there.”
“You got a gal here. The one give us that whiskey.”
“No, I’m going down the block,” I said, walking off.
“Geam?” he said. Two long strides and he was ’side me. “Geam, this a good place?”
“You don’t have to worry.”
“I mean for us?”
“It’s a good place,” I said. I nodded toward the bar. “Talk to that fat man at the other end of the bar. He’ll fix you up.”
“You talk to him.”
I shook my head. “No sir.”
He looked at me hard. He didn’t like it when I said I wasn’t going to be his pimp. He glanced over his shoulder at Vincent deLong who owned the place, then he looked at me again. He didn’t know how to go to a man like Vincent deLong, that’s why he wanted me to do it. That’s why he had wanted Pauline to talk to me before. He was helpless in a case like this. He wanted to be with her—yes, you could tell from watching them at the table how much he loved her and wanted to be with her; but he had to go to a black man, in a respectful way, and ask that black man for a room. He didn’t know how to do that. He didn’t know how to talk to a black man unless he was giving orders.
“I’ll see you,” I said, and went out.