Cockfighter - Charles Ray Willeford [52]
I grinned to myself, and tossed the chicken bone in the general direction of an ant nest. Mary Elizabeth had a sore point on those postcards. I'd have to do better than that. When I got back to Ocala, I'd write her a nice, interesting letter, a long newsy one for a change.
When I crossed through Wright's yard to the state road, I looked about apprehensively to see if he had returned, but he hadn't come back from town. Every time Wright caught me alone, he attempted to goad me into a fight. For Mary Elizabeth's sake, I had always refused to fight him. It would have given me a good deal of pleasure to knock a little sense into his thick head, but I knew that as soon as we started fighting he would whip out his knife, and then I would have to kill him.
I walked down the asphalt road. My biggest problem now was how to retrieve my shaving kit from the dresser in my room. If I returned to the house to get it, Randall would be curious as to why I was leaving so soon. If I wrote a note informing him I was going to take my rightful property and have him and Frances tossed out, he would attempt, with his trained lawyer's logic, to argue me out of my convictions. As I remembered, I had never really bested him in an oral argument. The only way I had ever won an argument with Randall was by resorting to force. And besides, Frances would bawl and carry on like crazy.
By the time I was level with the house, I decided the hell with the shaving kit, and continued on down the road. It would be less trouble all the way around if! bought another razor and a toothbrush when I got back to Jacksonville.
I walked about four miles before I was picked up by a kid in a hot rod and taken the rest of the way into Mansfield. When he let me out at a service station, I walked through the shady residential streets to Judge Brantley Powell's house on the upper side of town. He only went to his office in the mornings, and I was certain I could catch him at home. When! rapped with the wrought-iron knocker, I only had to wait a minute before Raymond, his white-wooled Negro servant, opened the door. Raymond peered at me blankly for a moment or so before he recognized me, and then he smiled.
“Mr. Frank,” he said cordially, “come in, come in!”
It was dark in the musty hallway when he closed the door. Raymond took my hat, led the way into the dim living room and raised the shades to let in some light.
“The judge he takin' his nap now, Mr. Frank,” he said uneasily. “I don't like to wake him 'less it's somethin' important.”
I considered. What was important to me probably wouldn't be considered important by the old judge. I waved my right hand with an indifferent gesture, and settled myself in a leather chair to wait.
“You goin' to wait, Mr. Frank?”
I nodded, picked up an old Life magazine from the table beside the chair and leafed through it. Raymond left the room silently, and returned a few minutes later with a glass of ice cubes and a pitcher of lemonade. A piece of vinegar pie accompanied the lemonade. Firm, tart and clear, with a flaky, crumbly crust, it was the best piece of vinegar pie I had ever eaten.
It was almost five before the judge came downstairs. Evidently Raymond had told him I was waiting on him because he addressed me by name when he entered the room and apologized for sleeping so late. Judge Powell had aged considerably in the four or five years that had gone by since I had last talked to him. He must have been close to eighty. His head wobbled and his hands trembled as he talked. I handed him the list of instructions I had written,