You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down_ Stories - Alice Walker [2]
On the TV he was inclined to dress like the deacon told him. But now he looked presentable.
Merry Christmas, said he.
And same to you, Son.
I don’t know why I called him Son. Well, one way or another they’re all our sons. The only requirement is that they be younger than us. But then again, Traynor seemed to be aging by the minute.
You looks tired, I said. Come on in and have a glass of Christmas cheer.
J. T. ain’t never in his life been able to act decent to a white man he wasn’t working for, but he poured Traynor a glass of bourbon and water, then he took all the children and grandkids and friends and whatnot out to the den. After while I heard Traynor’s voice singing the song, coming from the stereo console. It was just the kind of Christmas present my kids would consider cute.
I looked at Traynor, complicit. But he looked like it was the last thing in the world he wanted to hear. His head was pitched forward over his lap, his hands holding his glass and his elbows on his knees.
I done sung that song seem like a million times this year, he said. I sung it on the Grand Ole Opry, I sung it on the Ed Sullivan show. I sung it on Mike Douglas, I sung it at the Cotton Bowl, the Orange Bowl. I sung it at Festivals. I sung it at Fairs. I sung it overseas in Rome, Italy, and once in a submarine underseas. I’ve sung it and sung it, and I’m making forty thousand dollars a day offa it, and you know what, I don’t have the faintest notion what that song means.
Whatchumean, what do it mean? It mean what it says. All I could think was: These suckers is making forty thousand a day offa my song and now they gonna come back and try to swindle me out of the original thousand.
It’s just a song, I said. Cagey. When you fool around with a lot of no count mens you sing a bunch of ’em. I shrugged.
Oh, he said. Well. He started brightening up. I just come by to tell you I think you are a great singer.
He didn’t blush, saying that. Just said it straight out.
And I brought you a little Christmas present too. Now you take this little box and you hold it until I drive off. Then you take it outside under that first streetlight back up the street aways in front of that green house. Then you open the box and see… Well, just see.
What had come over this boy, I wondered, holding the box. I looked out the window in time to see another white man come up and get in the car with him and then two more cars full of white mens start out behind him. They was all in long black cars that looked like a funeral procession.
Little Mama, Little Mama, what it is? One of my grand-kids come running up and started pulling at the box. It was wrapped in gay Christmas paper—the thick, rich kind that it’s hard to picture folks making just to throw away.
J. T. and the rest of the crowd followed me out the house, up the street to the streetlight and in front of the green house. Nothing was there but somebody’s gold-grilled white Cadillac. Brandnew and most distracting. We got to looking at it so till I almost forgot the little box in my hand. While the others were busy making ’miration I carefully took off the paper and ribbon and folded them up and put them in my pants pocket. What should I see but a pair of genuine solid gold caddy keys.
Dangling the keys in front of everybody’s nose, I unlocked the caddy, motioned for J.T. to git in on the other side, and us didn’t come back home for two days.
1960
Well, the boy was sure nuff famous by now. He was still a mite shy of twenty but already they was calling him the Emperor of Rock and Roll.
Then what should happen but the draft.
Well, says J. T. There goes all this Emperor of Rock and Roll business.
But