And if Junior was the wild one, how come it was Linnie Mae who’d caused every single bit of trouble he’d found himself in since they’d met?
He was a sharp-boned, narrow-ribbed man, a man without an ounce of fat who had never had much interest in food, but sometimes when he came home from work in the late afternoon and Linnie was out back gabbing with her next-door neighbor he would stand in front of the refrigerator and eat all the leftover pork chops and then the wieners, the cold mashed potatoes, the cold peas and the boiled beets, foods he didn’t even like, as if he were starving, as if he had never gotten what he really wanted, and later Linnie would say, “Have you seen those peas I was saving? Where are those peas?” and he would stay stone silent. She had to know. What did she think: little Merrick craved cold peas? But she never said so. This made him feel both grateful and resentful. Lord it over him, would she! She must really think she had his number!
At such moments he would run his mind back through that long-ago trip to the train station, this time doing it differently. Down the dark streets, turn right past the station, turn right again onto Charles Street and drive back to the boardinghouse. Let himself into his room and lock the door behind him. Drop onto his cot. Fall asleep alone.
13
JUNIOR HAD EUGENE take the porch swing down to Tilghman Brothers, an establishment near the waterfront where Whitshank Construction sent customers’ shutters when they were so thick with paint that they resembled half-sucked toffees. Evidently the Tilghman brothers owned a giant vat of some caustic solution that stripped everything to the bare wood. “Tell them we need the swing back in exactly a week,” Junior told Eugene.
“A week from today?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Boss, those fellows can take a month with such things. They don’t like to be hurried.”
“Tell them it’s an emergency. Say we’ll pay extra, if we have to. Moving day is two Sundays from now, and I want the swing hanging by then.”
“Well, I’ll try, boss,” Eugene said.
Junior could see that Eugene was thinking this was an awful lot of fuss for a mere porch swing, but he had the good sense not to say so. Eugene was an experiment—Junior’s first colored employee, hired when the draft had claimed one of the company’s painters. He was working out okay, so far. In fact, last week Junior had hired another.
Linnie Mae had been worrying lately that Junior would be drafted himself. When he pointed out that he was forty-two years old, she said, “I don’t care; they could raise the draft age any day now. Or you might decide to enlist.”
“Enlist!” he said. “What kind of fool do you take me for?”
He had the feeling sometimes that his life was like a railroad car that had been shunted onto a side track for years—all the wasted, wild years of his youth and the years of the Depression. He was lagging behind; he was running to catch up; he was finally on the main track and he would be damned if some war in Europe was going to stop him.
When the swing came back it was virgin wood—a miracle. Not the tiniest speck of blue in the least little seam. Junior walked all around it, marveling. “Lord, I hate to think what-all they must have in that vat,” he told Eugene.
Eugene chuckled. “You want I should varnish it?” he asked.
“No,” Junior said, “I’ll do that.”
Eugene shot him a look of surprise, but he didn’t comment.
The two of them carried it out back and set it upside down on a drop cloth, so that Junior could varnish the underside first and give it time to dry before he turned it over. It was a warm May day with no rain in the forecast, so Junior figured he could safely leave it out overnight and come back the next morning to do the rest.
Like most carpenters, he had an active dislike of painting, and also he was conscious that he wasn’t very good at it. But for some reason it seemed important to accomplish this task on his own, and he worked carefully and patiently, even though this was the part of the swing that wouldn’t show. It was a pleasant occupation, really. The sunlight was filtering through the trees, and a breeze was cooling his face, and “Chattanooga Choo Choo” was playing in his mind.
You leave the Pennsylvania Station ’bout a quarter to four,
Read a magazine and then you’re in Baltimore …
When he was done, he cleaned his brush and put away the varnish and the mineral spirits, and he went home for supper feeling pleased with himself.