All Shot Up_ The Classic Crime Thriller - Chester Himes [38]
“You call what we been doing nothing?” she said coyly.
“I mean about my car,” he said. “It’s going to soon be daylight and ain’t nobody doing nothing.”
She went over, put some coal on the fire and adjusted the damper. Her dress was pulled out of shape and hung one-sided.
“I’m going to see if he got any whisky left,” she said, rummaging about the shoes on the floor of the curtained-off clothes corner.
He followed her and saw a green dress hanging with the men’s clothes.
“This looks like your dress,” he said suspiciously.
“Don’t start that stuff again,” she said. “You think they only made one dress when they made mine. Besides which, his girl friend is about the same size as me.”
“You’re sure she ain’t wearing the same skin?” he said.
She ignored him. Finally she came up with a bottle of cheap blended whisky, three-quarters full.
“Here, drink this and shut up,” she said, thrusting the bottle into his hands.
He uncorked it and let whisky gurgle down his throat. “It ain’t bad, but it’s mighty weak,” he appraised.
“How you going to know bad whisky?” she said scornfully. “You’re been drinking white mule all your life.”
He took another drink, bringing the level down below half. “Baby, I’m hungry enough to eat a horse off his hoof and leave the skeleton still hitched to the plow,” he said, flexing his muscles. “Why don’t you see if your girl friend’s boy friend has got anything to eat in this joint.”
“If I found something, it’d just make you more suspicious,” she said.
“Anyhow, it’d fill my belly.”
She found some salt meat, a half loaf of white bread in wax-paper wrapping and a bottle of molasses in the bottom drawer. Then she opened a back window and delved into a screened cold-box attached to the sill; she found a pot half-filled with congealed hominy grits and a frozen can of sliced California peaches.
“I don’t see no coffee,” she said.
“Who wants coffee?” he said, taking another swig from the bottle.
Shortly the room was filled with the delicious-smelling smoke of fried fat meat. She sliced the gelatinous hominy and browned it in the hot fat. He opened the can with his pocket knife but the contents were frozen solid, so he put the can on top of the stove.
She couldn’t find but one clean plate, so she used one slightly soiled. She polished a couple of forks with a dry cloth.
He filled his plate with fried hominy, covered it with fried meat and doused it with molasses. He stuffed his mouth full of dry bread, then packed meat, hominy and molasses on top of it.
She looked at him with disgust. “You can get the boy out the country, but you can’t get the country out the boy,” she philosophized, eating her meat daintily along with bites of bread and holding her fried hominy between the first finger and thumb, according to etiquette.
He was finished first. He got up and looked at the peaches. A core of ice still remained. He picked up the whisky bottle and measured it with his eye.
“You want some grog mixed with peach juice?” he asked.
She gave him a supercilious look. “I don’t mind if I do,” she said in a proper voice.
He looked about for a receptacle to hold the mixture, but not seeing any, he squeezed the rim of the can into a spout and poured the peach syrup into the whisky bottle. He shook it up and took a swallow and passed it to her. She took a swallow and passed it back.
Soon they were giggling and slapping at one another. The next thing they were on the bed again.
“I wish that man would hurry up and come on,” he said, making one last effort to be sensible.
“What you want to go looking for an old Cadillac in this weather for, when here you is got me?” she said.
“Let’s stop here and walk back,” Coffin Ed said.
Grave Digger coasted to a stop beside the entrance to the Alley. It was a dark gray morning, and not a soul was in sight.
They alighted slowly, like decrepit old men.
“This jalopy looks as though it’s been to the wars,” Grave Digger lisped.
His lips were swollen to such proportions it looked as though his face were turning wrong side out.
“You look like you