“Ha!” Pollard said. “I might be dumb, but I ain’t plumb dumb. I’ll pay ye when you finish the job.”
For the next three hours, Sugar dipped shit from the hole with the leaky bucket and carried it across the alley, dumped it over the other side of the fence. By the time he finished, there was a pile of waste standing four feet high in Mrs. Grady’s backyard, the edge of it sliding slowly toward the meticulously maintained plot bordered with seashells and white pebbles that contained her prizewinning rosebushes. He was just getting ready to knock on the back door of the bar to ask for his pay when a policeman sped up the alley in a car and stopped. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the cop asked in a sharp voice.
“Just got done cleanin’ out that jake,” Sugar explained. The thin coat of excrement that covered his clothes and hands and arms was already beginning to harden in the sunlit air.
“No, I mean why the fuck are you dumping it in Mrs. Grady’s yard?” the cop said. His name was Lester Wallingford, and his father was the chief of police in Meade. He and his brother, Luther, were the only two full-time employees on the force, and in their sibling rivalry to outdo each other, they were apt to arrest people for little more than spitting on the sidewalk, especially if one of the ten cells in the jail happened to be empty.
Sugar looked over at the pile, then noticed for the first time a tall woman with long, iron-gray hair in braids and a fringed shawl about her shoulders watching them from a window on the second floor of the house. “I’m just doing what the man told me to do,” he said to Lester.
“What man?”
“The barkeep in there.”
“Who? Pollard?”
“I don’t know his name. He just told me he’d give me two dollars to clean out his jake, said to put it over the fence there.”
Lester got out of the car and pounded on the back door of the Blind Owl. A minute or so later, Pollard opened it and stuck his head out. “Can I help ye?” he said in a casual tone, an innocent look on his meaty face.
“Did you hire this man to empty your shithouse?”
Pollard squinted past the policeman at the black man standing behind him, and his brow furrowed as if he were puzzled. “What the hell you talkin’ about?” he said. “I’ve never seen this fucker before in my life.”
It took Sugar a moment to realize what was happening, but when he caught on, he kicked at the bucket and yelled, “That’s a lie, you sonofabitch!”
“Now settle down,” Lester told Sugar. “You don’t want to be talkin’ to white folks like that.” He turned back and regarded Pollard suspiciously. “You tellin’ me this man just took it upon himself to dip out your crapper?”
Pollard shrugged. “I guess he musta. I don’t know why, though. Maybe he’s one of them perverts. I’ve heard some of them get their jollies rollin’ around in it. Like I said, I’ve never seen him before.”
“He’s lying, Officer,” Sugar yelled. “He promised me two dollars and a pint of whiskey for doing this!”
“What’s this about a pint?” Lester said. “You didn’t say nothing about that before.”
“See?” Pollard said. “He’s makin’ it up as he goes along. Christ, you ought to know how them fuckers are when they get caught.”
Screaming another obscenity, Sugar kicked the bucket again, and Lester drew his revolver. “I’m tellin’ you for the last time,” he warned, “settle down.”
“But you surely don’t believe him, do ye?” Sugar said.
Glancing over, Lester saw that Mrs. Grady was still watching from her window. She was bound to cause trouble if he didn’t make an arrest, and, though he figured Pollard was lying through his teeth, he couldn’t prove it. “Well, unless you got a paper or something saying that he hired you,” he said, “I don’t have no—” Just then, Sugar saw the barkeep wink, and he went crazy, lunging past the cop and trying to jerk the door open to get at the dirty bastard. “That’s it!” Lester yelled, sticking the barrel of his gun in the black man’s face. “You’re goin’ to jail.” He clapped a set of tarnished handcuffs on Sugar’s wrists and shoved him toward the car.