The town had a colored section adjacent to the mixed-race section. The buildings all seemed to lean at impossible angles, as if ready to collapse. You could smell cooking and heat and filth. A white policeman in a fancy blue uniform and a kepi-style hat walked up and down the street with a murderous-looking nightstick in his hand. Ragged children ran after him, trying to be nice. He wasn’t nice back. He was just fat and Irish-looking and mean. The people here stared at Guild and John T. Stoddard with white, forlorn eyes out of black, forlorn faces.
Rooney was the name of the colored fighter. Unlike Sovich he did not have a training camp. He worked outside against another Negro in tufty grass behind a bar where an ancient Jamaican man played a squeeze box. There were maybe thirty black men in a circle around the two fighters. Some of them wore the bright clothes of the bayou they originally came from. Most wore the drab rags of stoop laborers. Most of them were drunk. The sparring served to take their minds off their problems. They sounded as if they had only one real concern in this world, and that was how good Rooney looked.
“Come on, Rooney, you take him out, hear?”
“Come on, Rooney, quit playin’ and do the job.”
“Come on, Rooney, show him your real punch.”
Rooney was as squat and massive as Victor Sovich. He appeared to be a talented fighter capable of a good right hook and an even better left uppercut, but he did not have Sovich’s skill at moving left and right as he threw his combinations. The other fighter pegged him several times with punches Rooney should have been able to avoid. Guild could imagine what Sovich would do to this man.
“He looks good, doesn’t he?” Stoddard said.
“You know what Sovich will do to him.”
“Sure. But Rooney here will put on a good show. You’d be surprised at how many people will bet on him. A lot of white people secretly believe that colored boxers are stronger. And that’s what you have to play on—that belief.”
It was then that Guild saw the woman start to draw something from her purse, something that glinted suspiciously in the sunlight.
“Shit,” Guild said, and took off running to the other side of the crowd, where the woman stood.
John T. Stoddard shouted at Guild to stop, but Guild didn’t slow down.
The men around here were too drunk and too involved in the fight to see what she was about to do.
Guild got her just as she was leveling the small revolver at Rooney’s back.
He grabbed her wrist and tugged her free of the crowd. He must have grabbed her wrist very hard because she started crying almost immediately.
He pulled her inside the tavern. The place was shadowy and stank of the outhouse just outside the door.
“What the hell are you trying to do?” Guild said.
She just kept crying.
The bartender eased over for a better look at the two of them. Obviously he thought Guild had smacked her around some.
“I wanted to kill him,” she said.
This was the beautiful mulatto woman he had seen last night in the restaurant. She wore the same sort of frilly white lace at her neck, but today her dress was of blue silk and her small angled hat of a darker blue silk. She was still beautiful, but Guild’s impression of her fragile nature had been altered somewhat by the fact that she had just tried to kill a man.
“I know you wanted to kill him,” Guild said. “What I want to know is why.”
She glanced up at the bartender, who was still eavesdropping. “I don’t want to talk with him listening.”
“Let’s go for a walk, then.”
“Why are you so interested?”
“You wouldn’t be interested in a woman who pulls out a gun and almost shoots a man?”
She sighed. “I suppose I would be.”
They left a few minutes later. The bartender looked disappointed he hadn’t gotten to hear what happened.
Guild knew he should be back with Stoddard, but instead he walked with the mulatto woman. Several times she tried to walk away from him. Each time, he grabbed her elbow and jerked her back. “What’s going on here?” Guild would ask. “What’s shooting Rooney all about?” But she’d say nothing.
They walked out of the colored section to a park where children splashed chill silver water in a marble pool and where nurses pushed strollers. Dogs yipped and jumped at balloons and a three-year-old got chocolate all over her face.
When they reached the river, he pulled her into a tavern where the bar was nothing more than rough planks. The place smelled of heat and hops and wine and vomit. He could see she hated it in here. The men filled their ignorant eyes with her.
After two beers—his, not hers; she wouldn’t drink—he took her out behind the place and threw her up hard against a shed.
“I’m going to slap you,” he said, “if you don’t talk.”
She didn’t talk, and he slapped her very hard.
She immediately started sobbing.
“My name is Clarise Watson. I’m from Chicago. Rooney killed my brother a year ago.”
“In the ring?”
“Supposedly.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means that he put poison in my brother’s drinking water right before the fight. It made my brother very groggy. He couldn’t defend himself. He died right in the ring.”
He could see she was fighting tears again.
They had been walking once more, back to the colored section.
The block they were on was filled with children and teenagers. The latter stared long and hard at the beautiful mulatto woman. Guild could not quite tell if they liked her or despised her. Their stares seemed to convey both feelings.
The sunlight showed her skin to be a beautiful coffee color. In the daylight her features were even more beautiful. Only the lines in her neck betrayed her age. She had to be nearly forty.
“I’m sorry I keep crying.”
“Nothing to be sorry for.”
“I loved him.”
“I’m sure you did. You sure about the poison?”
“One of Rooney’s trainers admitted it to me.”
He looked at her closely. “He admitted it?”
She smiled without pleasure. “I had to help him. I gave him some bourbon and then I gave him myself.”
“I see.”
“You don’t sound as if you approve.”
“I don’t.”
“I wanted to know the truth.”
“You probably could have figured out another way.” “Could I?”
They walked another quarter block in silence. Guild felt jealous. It was ridiculous, feeling jealous. Then he felt ashamed. He realized then that he was still hung over.
He stopped and turned her toward him. “You going to try it again?”
“I don’t know. I’ve waited so long for today—built up to it so much. And then right at the last second you stopped me and—”
“I’m going to turn you over to the law. You tried to kill a man.”
“What?”
“You’re not giving me any choice.”
“You’ve got my gun.”
“You can always buy another one.”
“Maybe I won’t try. Maybe coming this close was good enough.”
“‘Maybe’ isn’t something I can count on.”
“Do you have a brother, Mr. Guild?”
“I had two of them. They both died in the war.”
“I’m sorry.”
He took a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lighted it up. The smoke tasted nutty in his throat and felt soft and blue in his lungs.
“I’m going to ask you again. You going to try to shoot him?”
She made a face. “I suppose not.”
“You’re a hell of a lot of help.”
She laughed. She had a wonderful laugh. “I don’t suppose I am, am I?”
“You staying anyplace special?”
“The Carleton Arms. The manager is out of town. The desk clerk said I could stay till the manager gets back. He hates Negroes.”
“Why don’t you meet me tonight in the Carleton dining room?”
She looked at him carefully. “What are you after, Mr. Guild?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“I guess that’s fair enough.”
He paused. “Rooney wouldn’t be worth hanging for.”
“Did you ever get over the death of your brothers?”
“Not really.”
“Then you know what I’m going through, Mr. Guild.”
With that, she walked off, making it clear that she didn’t want him to accompany her.
He watched her go down the block. The children came up to her and felt her beautiful blue dress and looked more closely at her beautiful face.
She looked back at him only once. She looked happy that the children were so accepting of her and seemed to like her so much.
She walked around the corner with them. Even from here he could hear their laughter. It was silver on the sudden cool breeze. His hangover did not bother him so much now. He thought of the man she’d had to sleep with. He felt angry, and stupid that he felt angry.
He went back to find John T. Stoddard.