MY MOTHER USED TO SAY, “When you’re truly in love, you see the face you love in your coffee cup, in the washstand mirror, in the shine on your shoes.” I remembered those words as I sat at my regular table at the Slide Inn, sipping a cup of strong and delicious chicory coffee.
Miss Fanny brought my breakfast of fried eggs, creamy salty grits, a slice of cured ham, and buttermilk biscuits, but I only had eyes for my coffee cup, and Mama’s words haunted me. I couldn’t stop thinking about Elizabeth. Yes, Mama. I see her face in the surface of my coffee.
Elizabeth.
If I were not feeling so lonely and abandoned by my wife, would I be having these feelings? Probably not. But I was feeling lonely and abandoned, and worse—aroused.
Elizabeth.
My reverie was broken by Fanny’s exclamation as she looked past me and out the window.
“That boy is like to drive me crazy, late as he is. Look at him, running up here like his shirttail’s on fire!”
A gangly colored boy of about sixteen was headed for the café in a big, sweaty, arm-pumping hurry—such a hurry, in fact, that he almost dashed in the front door without thinking.
Then he saw Fanny and me staring at him. He remembered his place, ducked his head, and went around back.
Miss Fanny went to meet him. Through the window to the kitchen I saw the two of them in serious conversation, the boy gesticulating wildly.
I waited until Miss Fanny came back out front, then lifted my finger for more coffee. She brought the tin pot over to me.
“What’s the trouble?” I said.
“Big trouble,” she said quietly. “Seems like there was another hangin’ party last night.”
I kept my voice low. “You mean… a lynching?”
“Two of ’em,” she said.