Colored Heat-Chapter 29

Chapter Twenty-Nine

                I worked my way over to North 14th sweating hard.  I don’t know if it was from the heat or from running off on Sally Ann, or maybe from both.  I headed out North 14th to the interstate as I’d done only days before and got my speed up a little.  The breeze was nice but it wasn’t cool.  I took the old highway to the country road, finding my way along by memory until I got to Horace Monroe’s house.

                The pickup was still up on blocks and I parked behind it.  Horace wasn’t out on the porch, but as I walked across the dirt patch in front of the house I saw him come to the screen door and look out.  His face broke into a grin when he saw it was me, and he unlatched the door and stepped out.

                “Mr. Carey!” he said, and shook my hand on the porch.  I felt a little uneasy that he called me that, but I let it pass.  “Come on inside,” he told me.  “It’s way too hot to be out here.”  I took him up on his offer and stepped inside.

                It was the first time I’d ever been inside a living black man’s house in Texas.  It didn’t look all that different than the white people’s homes I’d been to, but it was clear that the Monroes did not have a lot of money.  There were two cane chairs in the front room, and we sat down in them.

                “I’ve been looking into what we talked about the other day,” I began, “and I found something that I wanted to ask you about.”

                He leaned forward in his chair.  I took the photograph out of my pocket and showed it to him.  His eyebrows went up and down once, and he stared at it for a moment, then smiled and handed it back to me.

        “What about it?” he said.

        “Do you know who that is?” I asked.

        “Sho’, Mr. Carey, everyone ‘round here knew Mr. Macaboo.”

                It was my turn to smile.  “I mean the other man,” I said.

                He looked at me for a second, then seemed to decide I was okay.  “That’s Senior Tompkins.  He’s been dead a long time.”

        “Senior Tompkins?” I asked.

        “Um hm.”

        “Why do I know that name?” I said out loud.

                “His son Francis still works for the Macaboos, over at the house and at the bakery sometimes, too, last I heard.”

                That’s when it hit me.  Francis!  The houseboy, or house-man I had known all my life.  Here was his father, standing with Lester Macaboo in front of the bakery that was no longer there.  I recalled what Aunt Millie had told me and decided to take a chance.  I had nothing to lose.

                “Horace,” I began, for I would never have thought to address him as “Mister Horace” or “Mister Monroe,” though the second would have come more naturally, “someone told me something the other day about a problem a long time ago at the bakery.  I wonder if you know anything about it.”

        “What kind of a problem?” he asked.

                “Don’t know,” I replied.  “I was told that something happened a long time ago at the bakery and it caused a stir for awhile.  Some changes were made and things quieted down.”  I looked at the picture in my hand.  “I don’t know why, but I just can’t get around thinking this picture is connected, somehow.”

                He looked at me and then chuckled, in a low sort of way.  It made me feel as if I’d finally come to the right place.

                “You must be talking about the bet.”

                “What bet?”

                “Probably the most famous bet to ever be made in Ransom between a black man and a white man, that’s all.” He laughed out loud.  “Shoot, of course you wouldn’t have heard of it.  White people kept it quiet and probably forgot about it a long time ago.  But us black folks remember.  It’s a story everyone gets told when they’re old enough to understand how you can never make a fool out of the white man, if you’ll excuse me.”

                I wasn’t laughing.  I wanted to know exactly what he was talking about, and quickly.  I had to know if it tied things up for me.  He went on talking, leaning back in his chair as if  telling a child a fairy tale.

                “It was a long time ago, back in the forties, just after the war, I guess.  I heard about it from my uncle when I was a kid, and even then it was an old story.  The bakery--that’s the Oak Street Bakery, of course--was just getting up steam and they had started making the pecan pies.  This was long before they moved into the new building, and long before they started mailing the pies all over the place.

                “Anyway, Senior Tompkins was a janitor over there, probably the only one at that time, come to think of it.  It wasn’t such a big place then.

                “Senior got to be pretty good friends with Lester Macaboo Sr., working together day after day and plenty of nights, too.  You wouldn’t think a black man and a white man would be friends like that, especially not in those days, but there you are.  The way I’ve heard it, Lester Macaboo liked horses, women, and money, not necessarily in that order.  He’d made and lost a fortune on horses in Tennessee before coming to Texas, and he still cared more about them than pies and such.

                “Well, Lester had a few horses he kept out to Powell in those days, and he fancied himself a real sportsman.  He would ride around on a course he set up himself, and on the weekends he’d have Senior Tompkins out there looking after things for him.”

                I interrupted him.  “Did Lester’s wife know about this?” I asked.

                “Doubt it,” he replied.  “Least not all of it.  See, the way it was in those days, if a white man had something like that he wanted to do, he had to do it outside the city limits, especially if he felt like having a drink.  Town was dry in those days.  I don’t imagine his family was too interested in what he did with his horses out here on the weekends.  They wouldn’t have much liked him coming out here with Senior Tompkins, either.  No white man with a position in town had any business spending that much time with a black man, unless he was beating him.”  He guffawed at his own joke.

        “So how did the bet come about?” I asked.

                “Hold on, Mister Carey,” he said.  “Let a man tell a story.  Anyway, this went on for some time.  During the week, Lester and Senior worked together at the bakery, Lester building it up bit by bit and Senior cleaning up and doing most of the real work, I imagine.  On the weekends, Senior would walk to the edge of town and wait by the side of the road.  Lester would come along eventually in his jalopy, pick up Senior out where no one was watching, and together they’d head for the stable in Powell and have a big time, drinking and riding the horses.

                “Now one day--I believe it was a Sunday, which is important--no one was supposed to do much of anything on Sundays in those days, other than go to meetin’ and sit around with the women listening to them talk about Jesus.  As you can guess, both Lester and Senior Tompkins would do anything to get out of Ransom on a Sunday and head out to the horses in Powell.

“Well, one Sunday they did just that.  After a while, they were drinking, and I understand they got into a bit

of an argument.  Senior was feeling his oats and when Lester told him he was just a lowdown nigger, Senior said he could out ride Lester any Sunday or any other day, for that matter.

                “Lester must have been just drunk enough to take him up on it, because before you knew it they had picked out the two fastest horses and set up a course for a race.

                “There wasn’t anyone else out there most of the time, but on that particular Sunday a young fellow who had just come back from the Army happened to be walking by on the way to see his girl.  Lester and Senior Tompkins pulled this young man aside from the side of the road and asked him to judge their race.”

        “Who was the young man?” I asked.

                “He just died the other day, from what I hear.  Peter Crane was his name.”

                “My god,” I said, before I had a chance to process what I had just heard.  Horace went on without missing a beat, and I composed my face as he spoke.

                “Yep, Peter Crane was the referee for that race.  Way I heard tell, he thought the whole thing was a lark, and he joined Lester and Senior in a drink.  Well, Lester got on his favorite horse and Senior got on his, and off they went.  The course was out in a field and they went around and around it three times.  They were laughin’ and whoopin’ it up, and Lester thought he’d have an easy win on his hands, but something surprising happened as they came around the course for the third time.”  He leaned back in his chair and smiled at me.

                “And what was that?” I asked.

                “Senior Tompkins wasn’t as dumb as Lester thought.  He had been watching those horses for a while, and the one he had picked out to ride had a little something extra.  Call it legs, call it stamina, I don’t know.  But whatever it was, that horse started to pick up speed after the second course around the field.

                “And on came Senior Tompkins, hittin’ that horse with his hat and yellin’ at the top of his lungs.  The way I heard it, Lester was just dumbstruck, and almost stopped riding for a second or two.  Then he hunkered down and really got movin’.

                “They rode like the wind toward the end of the course, with Senior Tompkins and Lester trading places a few times and Peter Crane standing on the side just dancing with glee at the sight of a black man beating his boss.

                “They passed the finish line and came around back to where Crane was standing, and Lester’s face was dark.  All of the liquor had been burned out of him in the excitement of the ride, and he knew what had just happened.  Because what Peter Crane didn’t know as he told them Senior Tompkins was the clear winner, was that before he had been called on to judge the race, Lester and Senior Tompkins had made a bet.  A drunken bet?  Maybe, but a bet just the same.  I wonder if you can guess what that bet was.”

                I shook my head no.  “Tell me,” I said.

                He held back a second, then he told me what I’d been waiting to hear.  “They bet the title to the bakery,” he said.

                “What?” I almost yelled, and it sounded loud and hollow in that tiny living room in Horace Monroe’s shack out there on the dusty country road in Powell, Texas.  “What do you mean?”

                “Just what I said.  Lester and Senior agreed, or so Senior would later tell it, that if Senior won, he’d get the title to the bakery and take over as owner.”

                “And what if Lester won?”

                “Why, Senior would be his boy for the rest of his life.  Kind of like slavery, if you get my drift.  Of course, Lester never thought for a second that he’d lose, picking the best horse and all, so what did he care?  But Senior beat him in that race, fair and square.”

                “So why isn’t it the Tompkins Bakery now?” I asked, having a vague idea at the answer I’d get.

                He threw his head back and roared with laughter.  “The Tompkins Bakery!  That’s a good one, Mr. Carey.  The Tompkins Bakery.  Now what makes you think that Lester would hold up his end of the bet?”

        “But Crane was there to vouch for the winner,” I said.

                “So what?  In those days, who would listen to a couple of blacks against a white man like Lester Macaboo?  Senior knew it right away and apologized to Lester, and the whole thing was forgotten pretty quickly.  But Crane talked about it and Senior got drunk one night and told his friends, and word sort of got around that Senior was the new owner of the bakery.

                “Well, Lester put a stop to that mighty quick.  As I understand it, Senior nearly lost his job, and Crane was just back in town from the Army, so it wouldn’t have done him much good to be fightin’ with the white man.  I believe Senior ended up working for Lester for the rest of his life, and when he had a boy, he had a job with the Macaboo family, too.”

                So that was how Francis got the job as houseboy for the Macaboos.  I’d known him all my life but I’d never heard a word about any of this.  I thanked Horace for the story and we talked about the weather for a little while.  I was about to leave when he reminded me of something: “Don’t put too much stock in that story, Mister Carey,” he said.  “It’s just an old story among us folks, and I don’t know how much truth there is to it anyway.

                “It’s just a kind of funny story that tells you the way things are most of the time, leastways around here.”

                We shook hands and I left.  I got in my Chevy and drove back into Ransom.