Chapter Eleven

Just shut your trap, kid and give me a minute,” MacDuff said, as he turned away from Kyle and pulled a crumpled, hand-drawn map from his overall’s bib pocket.

Maybe he’d gotten the landmark wrong and missed the turnoff or gone too many blocks. He doubted it.

He couldn’t read no fifty-cent words or cipher numbers worth a darn, but his hound-dog sense of direction and memory kept him employed as one of the top delivery truck drivers at Gates Rubber Co.

He knew his way around every square block of Denver, with the exception of Five Points, which had never been a part of his route anyway.

He’d only agreed to the occasional side jobs to this part of town as a personal favor to Dr. Locke, and he found the beauty shop OK that time.

MacDuff flipped the map from front to back, once, twice, then a third time. The paper that the map was drawn on was jagged on one side, and long with red lines — the kind of paper used for business ledgers.

The numbers on the map matched the numbers on the gatepost, but this operation looked too big time to be a jig’s. Since when did niggers own warehouses and trucking companies?

He spit out a stream of well-chewed tobacco, successfully aiming it at the group of dahlias along the fence. MacDuff cocked his head toward the fancy-shmancy shingle over the gate. “You able to make out any of the scribble-scrabble on the sign?”

“What?” Kyle asked, absently, as he stared across the street at the pretty brown girl seated at a desk visible in the window of an insurance company. The girl waved back at him.

MacDuff spit, the spew of his tobacco and saliva splattering on the toe of Kyle’s boot and then slapped Kyle on the back of the head.

“Hey!” Kyle said, rubbing his head, looking MacDuff up and down.

MacDuff took a swig from his flask. He capped it and threw it back onto the seat of the truck through the open driver’s side window. “Stop screwin’ around. We’re here on business. You damn near bad as your ole man.”

“My ole man and I ain’t …”

“Forget it, kid,” MacDuff interrupted. “Just tell me what it says up on that sign. I can’t make out all them loopde-loops.”

“Well,” Kyle said, “the top line says, ‘D.L. Hudson and Son. The second line, Hauling, Storage, and Refurbished Goods. Bottom line ...”

MacDuff delivered another smack to Kyle’s head. “Look! Bottom, top. Top, bottom. Do I care? Just read the friggin’ thing.”

“Okay. All right,” Kyle said, holding up his arms against any further of MacDuff’s assaults. “It says, ‘Fair rates; hard work; quality merchandise.’”

For a long moment, MacDuff was quiet. “Humph!” he finally said, “Niggers somehow get more than two nickels to rub together and suddenly they imaginin’ they high and mighty.”

He spit again. This time Kyle managed to double-step backward before the juice hit ground.

A second later, a larger truck than their own rumbled up behind them. They both jumped at least a foot closer to the gate. The truck, an old pickup, was weighed down with a full bed of used lumber. The truck’s driver, a muscled colored youth no older than Kyle, sounded the truck’s horn.

Kyle and MacDuff just watched as an older colored man pulled the gate open, and the truck drove into the vast storage yard beyond the gate.

As the man controlling the gate started to close it, MacDuff jammed the gate open with his foot. “Hurry up, boy,” he said to Kyle, indicating for him to go. “I ain’t got all day.”

The man at the gate remained expressionless, but waited until Kyle and MacDuff were inside the yard to close the gate. Kyle and MacDuff walked a few feet into the fenced acreage and looked around.

Among the snake-like aisles of old appliances, discarded automobile parts, and the crates filled with who knew what, were colored men sorting the items into various barrels. The colored men looked at Kyle and MacDuff momentarily, but didn’t stop working.

A three-story wooden building sat at the back of the property. MacDuff noticed the blinds close in one of the building’s upper windows. He headed toward the building and signaled Kyle to follow.

They passed the truck, which had just driven in.

“Hey, boy,” MacDuff called to the driver, “this Hudson’s place?”

The gate-opener looked across at the truck driver. “Anthony. I think that ofay’s talkin’ to you.”

Anthony’s arm and chest muscles bulged as he lifted a stack of lumber onto his shoulder. He barely looked at MacDuff. “If that cracker wants to do business with my dad, he’s sure off to a wrong start,” he said loud enough for MacDuff to easily overhear.

Anthony’s co-workers laughed, but still didn’t slow their efforts. MacDuff clenched his fists, and waited for the answer to his question. He didn’t get one. Kyle watched MacDuff’s face turn red.

MacDuff studied each of the colored men’s faces. One by one, he burned them into his memory. He especially wanted to remember Anthony, a smart aleck.

“This might be a junkyard,” Anthony said to the others as he watched Kyle and MacDuff go into the building, “but nothing my dad owns depends on one measly dime from a white man. For sure, not one country enough to be using a matchstick for a toothpick. And what about that blonde ass bumpkin’ with him?”

⟞ • ⟝

“Wait for me down here,” MacDuff said to Kyle, as they climbed the stairs and reached the building’s second floor.

Kyle scanned the bales of rags dominating the floor’s open space, and decided to sit down on a step. MacDuff continued to the third floor where he found a sea of desks staffed by colored men and women. Some people were typing, and some were on phones and filling out forms.

A group of three or four was meeting around a large wall map of the city. MacDuff noted the little flags pinned in various locations on the map.

An attractive, dark-skinned woman walked toward MacDuff. “Good afternoon, Mr. MacDuff. I’m Miss Forbes, Mr. Hudson’s secretary. He asked me to show you to his office.”

MacDuff was speechless as the secretary led him down a wide aisle between the desks. For the most part, the men and women continued working, but one of the younger women had stopped typing and was watching MacDuff as he approached. As he passed by her, he smiled and removed his hat. She blushed and looked down at her keyboard.

“This way, Mr. MacDuff,” Miss Forbes reminded.

The back of MacDuff’s ears burned with embarrassment. In a few more steps, Miss Forbes and MacDuff reached a door with a clouded pane of glass in its upper half.

“Miss Forbes,” MacDuff said to her before she could open the door, “I’ve … lost my glasses. Out of curiosity, would you mind telling me what it says on the door?”

Miss Forbes read the gold imprint on the door’s window. “Hudson and Son Moving and Storage. Hudson and Son Real Estate and Property Management. Hudson and Son Domestic Employment Agency.”

“Thank you,” MacDuff said.

Miss Forbes opened the door and waited as MacDuff walked into Dwight Hudson’s office. She left the two men alone, but left the door slightly ajar.

“MacDuff,” Dwight said, and put down the contract he was reading. “Come in, come in.” Dwight rose from his chair and went to greet MacDuff with an extended hand.

MacDuff ignored Dwight’s hand, and instead surveyed the office furnishings — leather sofa, mahogany desk, crystal lamp, two oil paintings, and a wall of shelves full of leatherbound books.

“OK,” MacDuff muttered.

He figured he could get five hundred for the job Hudson had hired him to do, but seeing all this, wasn’t no way he was going to let him off for less than a grand. Dwight closed the door.

“Something the matter, MacDuff?” Dwight asked as he offered him a Cuban cigar from a silver humidor with the initials DCH engraved on the lid.

“Seems crazy all this has to go,” MacDuff said.

MacDuff selected one of the cigars, then held it under his nostrils and inhaled. “Ahhh!”

Dwight lit his guest’s cigar, then his own.

“Depends on how you look at things,” Dwight said as he blew a puff of the pungent smoke into the air.

Dwight reached in the silver box again, took a fistful of the habanos and stuffed them in the bib pocket of MacDuff’s overalls. He dumped the remaining cigars in the wastebasket and threw in the humidor after them.

MacDuff eyed the box. He could’ve bought a dozen rifles for what that box was probably worth.

“Personally,” said Dwight as he climbed a rolling ladder positioned along the floor to ceiling bookshelves. “I find sentimentality useless and boring. A man gets stuck in the past that way.”

Dwight scanned the upper rows of the shelves, and pulled down two books. “On to bigger and better is the way I see it. Except for these.”

He held a gilt-edged volume of The Collected Works of William Shakespeare, and a tattered, string-bound copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

“This one,” he said as he descended the stairs and wriggled the Shakespeare in his hand, “was my mother’s gift to me for graduating high school. ‘Son,’ she said, ‘you read this, cover to cover, and you’ll be prepared for anything white folks try to throw at you.’

“Man, was I disappointed. It was one thing, never getting Christmas or birthday presents, but all I’d ever wanted, since I was old enough to know, was my pop’s pocket watch. He’d promised it to me the day he died. Only, Mama hocked it to buy this. I’ve almost incinerated it more times than I can count, yet for some reason, I just can’t do it.”

Dwight set the Shakespeare volume on his desk blotter. MacDuff made no comment. He untied the string around the Uncle Tom’s book and removed two shot glasses and a small sterling silver flask from its customized pages.

“God rest my mother’s sweet soul, MacDuff. Turned out she was one hundred percent right. In fact, it was the best advice anyone ever gave me.”

Dwight poured whiskey from the flask into the glasses. “Join me for a little thirst quencher?”

MacDuff accepted the offer. Dwight took another puff on his cigar, and then raised his glass into the air.

“You’re a smart man, MacDuff. If you’ve got a daughter, you’re probably the type who doesn’t want her marrying my son,” Dwight said, and took a healthy swig of his drink, “but any man that gets my money damn sure better be willing to drink my liquor.”

Dwight and MacDuff clinked glasses.

“Saluda,” said Dwight, and waited for MacDuff to drink.

“Whatever you say, Hudson,” answered MacDuff, and quickly downed the imported, and very illegal, whiskey.

Instead of drinking any more of the whiskey, Dwight poured the contents of his glass into a potted plant. He reached for an envelope tucked inside the middle pages of the Shakespeare book and opened the envelope.

From it he took a map that was drawn on a long sheet of paper that was jagged on one side and had red lines. He handed the paper and envelope to MacDuff.

“This is the down payment and a better map. More specific. I don’t want any mistakes. Study it, then get rid of it.”

MacDuff tucked the envelope in his bib pocket. “I’ve been at this a long time, Hudson. I don’t make mistakes. Ever.” MacDuff held out his glass for a refill.

Dwight obliged, pouring the flask’s contents into MacDuff’s glass until the last of the amber liquid had been emptied. “You’re my kind of man, MacDuff. Who knows? Maybe, somewhere, way back, we’re even kin.” He watched for MacDuff’s reaction.

MacDuff didn’t take the bait. He just tilted his glass toward his mouth and let its residue drip down his throat. Dwight walked to the window and opened it. “Come here, MacDuff. I want you to see something.”

MacDuff moved to the window, yet remained arm’s length from Dwight.

“That’s my boy,” Dwight said, nodding toward Anthony, who was just unloading the last of the lumber, “the whole reason for everything I’ve built and struggled for. My pride. My joy. Nothing I wouldn’t do for him.”

Dwight patted MacDuff’s bib pocket. “To be specific, this here is so he won’t ever have to be just another nigger under the white man’s foot. I’m willing to pay whatever it costs to ensure that. Get my point.”

MacDuff hooked his thumb under his overalls bib, and spit with a dead aim into the wastebasket.

“Like I told you, at our first meeting, Hudson, my work is guaranteed.”