The Marrowbone Marble Company. Glenn Taylor
it now, Kemoslabe,” Erm said. “Big Chief White Owl want smokem.”
Ledford interceded. “Charlie here is handing out cigars on account of Rachel giving birth Saturday.”
Erm spun his head. “No foolin. You son of a bitch.” They shook hands again. “Boy or girl?”
“Boy. William, after my daddy.”
“How about that? Big Bill Ledford. I bet he’s a biggin. Hung where it counts like his old man.”
Charlie laughed.
Erm glared at him. “Let’s have at it then. Open er up and fire the torch.”
The three of them stood and smoked and Erm uncorked his gin and passed the bottle. Ledford couldn’t bear to tell him how much he’d cut back, so he sipped light instead. He explained how they were doing just fine, careful not to badmouth his job too much in front of Charlie. “Renting out the old house,” Ledford said.
“Yeah, to a nigger,” Charlie said. He laughed and took another swig off the bottle.
Ledford stared Charlie down and breathed slow and even. He contemplated his response.
Erm said, “Well Sally, you just jump in anytime.”
Now both men stared at him, and Charlie set the bottle on the desk and excused himself.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Erm said. “Who the hell was that pansy?”
“That’s Rachel’s first cousin. Her daddy’s nephew. Pain in my ass.” They both reached for the bottle at the same time. Laughed and exchanged after you sirs.
Erm sat down and explained he was passing through on business he had in Baltimore. He got quiet after that. Neither spoke of their last meeting. Of Ledford’s serious talk, of Erm’s fuck you admonition, of the inevitable end of the auto driver who’d run over the wrong man.
Ledford still owed Erm six hundred on a straight play from the previous November, when Army had blanked West Virginia. The spread was two touchdowns. The final score was 19–0. Erm even made him pay the vig.
Ledford had been laying off the gambling like it was the sauce.
After a long silence, Erm said, “I got married.”
“I’ll be damned. When?”
“Last Thursday.” He looked around at the empty walls, tapped his shoes on the floor.
“Well . . . congratulations Erm.” Ledford nodded his head to convince himself such a move was wise for his friend.
“Yeah,” Erm said. “She’s got a bun in the oven.”
Ledford raised his eyebrows. “Congratulations again.”
“A toast to married life,” Erm said. They drank again, and Ledford was about to ask what her name was when Erm hopped out of his chair and said, “I gotta hit the road, but I’ll be coming back through real soon.”
Ledford stood. He smiled uneasy. There was something in Erm’s demeanor, something that said he was running from trouble. Ledford would not protest the abrupt departure. It was the way things were for Erminio Bacigalupo. Always, he was running. Don Staples had been talking to Ledford about such movement through life. Away from things. Toward them.
“Listen,” Erm said. He was making sure his shirt cuffs stuck out beyond his jacket. “I got something I need you to hold on to for me.” He pulled a fat-stuffed leather envelope from his inside pocket. “Just make sure it stays where nobody gets their hands on it.” He held it out, but Ledford didn’t reach. “It isn’t a bag of dogshit Ledford. It’s dough. And a book.”
Ledford laughed and took it. Rubbed his thumb across the gold snap button holding it shut. “I got a safe spot in the basement at home.”
“Good. And for your trouble, we’ll wipe your paysheet clean. Get you out of my left column, back on the right.” Erm winked. Then he leaned forward. “But listen,” he said. “If I don’t make it back from Baltimore, you see that money gets to my old lady.”
An alarm sounded from the factory floor. Erm stuck his fingers in his ears. “Some job you got here,” he hollered.
“It’s just a backup on the flow line,” Ledford hollered back. He looked at the half-full gin bottle, wondered if his friend would be leaving it behind.
“Whatever you say.” Erm licked his pointer and pinky fingers, then smoothed his eyebrows. “For Ernestine on the way out,” he said. He turned, was gone, then stuck his head back in the office. He yelled, “I’ll be back in a week or two.”
The alarm shut down, and from outside his door, Ledford could hear the low murmur of Erm’s voice, then Ernestine’s giggle. The leather envelope in his hand was squared off, worn at the corners by whatever it held. It was smooth cowhide, a deep brown. Ledford wondered why Erm might not make it out of Baltimore alive. He wondered how much money was in his hands. He put the envelope in the middle drawer of his desk. In the bottom right drawer he set the gin bottle on its side. Then he sat down and stared at the pile of paperwork before him. At home, Rachel would be nursing or napping. Mary would be playing with her great-aunt. Ledford looked at Mary’s photograph on the wall. He’d need to get one up of William.
THEY WERE CALLING HIM Willy within a week. Sometimes Ledford called him Willy Amos. He slept just fine in the daylight hours, but at night he fussed and fought his swaddling. Rachel was too tired to rise every time, so Ledford took to walking the house with the boy. He sang to him and he danced with him. He stared at the boy’s eyes and how they locked on to an unknown point and stayed there regardless of swaying, all iris and pupil, black as cast iron. He had a darker tint to him than Mary. He was bigger than she’d been.
Ledford one-armed little Willy in the basement early Sunday morning. It was not yet four a.m. He pulled the lightbulb chain hanging from the rafters, and the boy squeezed his eyes shut. “It’s all right,” Ledford told him. “Just a lightbulb.”
Willy cried some, so Ledford lifted him high and sniffed directly at the seat of his diaper. It smelled only of powder. “That’s a boy,” he said. “You just stay that way until your mother rises and shines.”
He strolled the length of the basement floor, pointing to and naming the tail fan of turkey feathers, the glass scrap shaped liked diamonds, the map of the world he’d hung. He put his fingertip to the map and said, “This here green chunk is the United States of America, and right here, West Virginia, is where we live.” He slid the finger to the right. “And if you take a boat or a airplane across all this blue water, and you cross this pink Spain and over all these different colors in Africa, you get to here,” he tapped his finger against it, “to these little specks of nothing on the blue ocean, to where your daddy was for a time.” Willy’s head wobbled from his propped vantage point on Ledford’s shoulder. He liked the tapping sound of his father’s fingers on the paper map.
Ledford laughed. “All right, little one,” he said. They stared at one another for a moment, and Ledford kissed him on the forehead. Then he looked back to the map.
He took a deep breath and told his boy that he’d not ever have to go to the little specks on the ocean, nor any other place like them. He put his hand on the boy’s chest, his fingers nearly wrapping around the girth of him, and he said, “I will protect you from all of it, William Amos.”
When the boy fell asleep, Ledford set him on a cushioned desk chair from the old house. He began unpacking the last of the boxes. Attic Junk it read on the side. In the box, an old black album of photographs popped and cracked when he opened it. With each turned page, it shed little black corner frames. Ledford gathered them as they fell. The photographs themselves were lined and chipped with age. They were not in the order they’d been intended. Their look made them his daddy’s people,