But when a fellow like him comes here three times, pinching my girls and bringing one half-pint of whiskey and ordering four coca-colas.……Just a cheap, vulgar man, honey.
So I told Minnie not to let him in anymore, and here one afternoon I aint no more than laid down for a nap when—I never did find out what he done to Minnie to get in.
I know he never give her nuttin.
How did he do it, Minnie?
He must a showed you something you never seen before.
Didn’t he?”
Minnie tossed her head.
“He aint got nothing I wantin to see.
I done seed too many now fer my own good.”
Minnie’s husband had quit her.
He didn’t approve of Minnie’s business.
He was a cook in a restaurant and he took all the clothes and jewelry the white ladies had given Minnie and went off with a waitress in the restaurant.
“He kept on asking and hinting around about that girl,” Miss Reba said, “and me telling him to go ask Popeye if he wanted to know right bad.
Not telling him nuttin except to get out and stay out, see; so this day it’s about two in the afternoon and I’m asleep and Minnie lets him in and he asks her who’s here and she tells him aint nobody, and he goes on up stairs.
And Minnie says about that time Popeye comes in.
She says she dont know what to do.
She’s scared not to let him in, and she says she knows if she does and he spatters that big bastard all over the upstairs floor, she knows I’ll fire her and her husband just quit her and all.
“So Popeye goes on upstairs on them cat feet of his and comes on your friend on his knees, peeping through the keyhole.
Minnie says Popeye stood behind him for about a minute, with his hat cocked over one eye.
She says he took out a cigarette and struck a match on his thumbnail without no noise and lit it and then she says he reached over and held the match to the back of your friend’s neck, and Minnie says she stood there halfway up the stairs and watched them: that fellow kneeling there with his face like a pie took out of the oven too soon and Popeye squirting smoke through his nose and kind of jerking his head at him.
Then she come on down and in about ten seconds here he comes down the stairs with both hands on top of his head, going wump-wump-wump inside like one of these here big dray-horses, and he pawed at the door for about a minute, moaning to himself like the wind in a chimney Minnie says, until she opened the door and left him out.
And that’s the last time he’s even rung this bell until tonight.…Let me see that.”
Horace gave her the paper.
“That’s a nigger whore-house,” she said.
“The lous—Minnie, tell him his friend aint here.
Tell him I dont know where he went.”
Minnie went out.
Miss Reba said:
“I’ve had all sorts of men in my house, but I got to draw the line somewhere.
I had lawyers, too.
I had the biggest lawyer in Memphis back there in my dining-room, treating my girls.
A millionaire.
He weighed two hundred and eighty pounds and he had his own special bed made and sent down here.
It’s upstairs right this minute.
But all in the way of my business, not theirs.
I aint going to have none of my girls pestered by lawyers without good reason.”
“And you dont consider this good reason? that a man is being tried for his life for something he didn’t do?
You may be guilty right now of harboring a fugitive from justice.”
“Then let them come take him.
I got nuttin to do with it.
I had too many police in this house to be scared of them.”
She raised the tankard and drank and drew the back of her hand across her mouth.
“I aint going to have nuttin to do with nuttin I dont know about.
What Popeye done outside is his business.
When he starts killing folks in my house, then I’ll take a hand.”
“Have you any children?”
She looked at him.
“I dont mean to pry into your affairs,” he said.
“I was just thinking about that woman.
She’ll be on the streets again, and God only knows what will become of that baby.”