The Collected Novels of Charles Wright by Charles Wright

Author:Charles Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-07-02T16:00:00+00:00

Eleven

MORNING CAME as I knew it would: gray with rain. Cooing pigeons and doves. The smell of bacon grease and burnt toast and powerful black Negro coffee, spiced with potents which would enable you to face The White Man come Monday morning. The sound of Mrs. Tucker’s Carolina litany could be heard through the wall. A typical Sunday morning.

Grateful, I reached up and touched something unfamiliar: The Wig, silky and very much together. Then I began to doze, until I felt The Deb’s lips against my neck.

“Les, honey,” she yawned. “Be a good boy. Don’t be a finky-foo.”

“No,” I mumbled. “Not the first goddam thing in the morning.”

“I hate you!”

“Go back to sleep. It’s early.”

“Oh. You’ll be sorry.”

“Knock it off, cupcake.”

“I hate you!”

I had to quiet the bitch. So I pinched one buttock and commanded: “Sleep or else I knock you out of bed.”

“No, you won’t,” The Deb sneered. “I’m getting up. I’m cutting out. ‘Go back to sleep, cupcake,’” The Deb mimicked.

She was up now, prowling around the room like an early-morning hag.

“Oh, you’re one labrador retriever in the bed,” she said angrily. “But ask a simple favor like turning on the record player for a little good music, and . . . finky-foo.”

I covered my head with the sheet and presently there was no longer the lazy beat of raindrops, or the cooing of pigeons and doves.

Early morning had exploded. The Deb had “Rocking With It” on real loud.

Bolting up in bed, I shouted: “Are you satisfied?”

“Yes, thank you.”

I watched her dress, each deft movement timed to the rocking music. I felt forlorn, for there is nothing worse than a lovers’ quarrel on a rainy Sunday morning. I wanted to jump out of bed and hug and kiss The Deb and say: “Baby, if that’s what you wanna hear, it’s all right with me.”

No, I’d hold out. After all, I was Bewigged and possessed a great future, that no one could deny.

“So you’re cutting out,” I said.

“Indeed.”

Dammit! If I had had my own natural kinky hair, “my thorny crown” (a most powerful weapon, I suddenly realized), The Deb wouldn’t be switching her tail around, acting so high and mighty. She would have known by the texture of my hair that I was a mean son of a bitch. I’d have made her eat dirt.

She stood in the center of the room giving me the evil eye with her legs spread apart like those butch fruit cowboys on television and tore the wrapper from a stick of chewing gum and threw it on the floor.

“I’m cutting, shithead,” The Deb said. “When you get some loot, and that means money, drop around. I sorta like you, I do.” And she left, giving the door a good bang.

I lay on that cold bed, twisting, turning. I wanted to go out and strangle every last one of those pigeons and doves in the name of love and then cook them for dinner. Suffering, I didn’t feel romantic or noble about letting The Deb walk out on me.

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