It

and they walked big, and they talked big. They were big. I was in Wally’s Spa one night when I saw a fella split his shirt right down one arm while he was armrassling this other fella. It didn’t just rip — you probably think that’s what I mean, but it ain’t. Arm of that man’s shirt damn near exploded — sort of blew off his arm, in rags. And everybody cheered and applauded and somebody slapped me on the back and said, «That’s what you call an armrassler’s fart, blackface.»
‘What I’m telling you is that if the men who used those blind pigs on Friday and Saturday nights when they come out of the woods to drink whiskey and fuck women instead of knotholes greased up with lard, if those men hadn’t wanted us there, they would have thrown us out on our asses. But the fact of it was, Mikey, they didn’t seem to give much of a toot one way or the other.
‘One of em took me aside one night — he was six foot, which was damn big for those days, and he was dead drunk, and he smelled as high as a basket of month-old peaches. If he’d stepped out of his clothes, I think they would have stood up alone. He looks at me and says, «Mister, I gonna ast you sumpin, me. Are you be a Negro?»
‘»That’s right,» I says.
«‘Commen’ ça va!» he says in the Saint John Valley French that sounds almost like Cajun talk, and grins so big I saw all four of his teeth. «I knew you was, me! Hey! I seen one in a
book once! Had the same — » and he couldn’t think how to say what was on his mind, so he reaches out and flaps at my mouth.
‘»Big lips,» I says.
‘»Yeah, yeah!» he says, laughin like a kid. «Beeg leeps! Épais lèvres! Beeg leeps! Gonna buy you a beer, me!»
‘»Buy away,» I says, not wanting to get on his bad side.
‘He laughed at that too and clapped me on the back — almost knocking me on my face — and pushed his way up to the plankwood bar where there must have been seventy men and maybe fifteen women lined up. «I need two beers fore I tear this dump apart!» he yells at the bartender, who was a big lug with a broken nose named Romeo Dupree. «One for me and one pour I’homme avec les épais lèvres!» And they all laughed like hell at that, but not in a mean way, Mikey.
‘So he gets the beers and gives me mine and he says, «What’s your name? I don’t want to call you Beeg Leeps, me. Don’t sound good.»
‘»William Hanlon,» I says.
‘»Well, here’s to you, Weelyum Anlon,» he says.
‘»No, here’s you ,» I says. «You’re the first white man who ever bought me a drink.» Which was true.
‘So we drank those beers down and then we had two more and he says, «You sure you’re a Negro? Except for them épais leeps, you look just like a white man with brown skin to me.»‘
My father got to laughing at this, and so did I. He laughed so hard his stomach started to hurt him, and he held it, grimacing, his eyes turned up, his upper plate biting down on his lower lip.
‘You want me to ring for the nurse, Daddy?’ I asked, alarmed.
‘No . . . no. I’m goan be okay. The worst thing of this, Mikey, is that you can’t even laugh anymore when you feel like it. Which is damn seldom.’
He fell silent for a few moments, and I realize now that that was the only time we came close to talking about what was killing him. Maybe it would have been better — better for both of us — if we had done more.
He took a sip of water and then went on.
‘Anyway, it wasn’t the few women who travelled the pigs, and it wasn’t th e lumberjacks that made up their main custom who wanted us out. It was those five old men on the Town Council who were really offended, them and the dozen or so men that stood behind them — Derry’s old line, you know. None of them had ever stepped a foot inside of the Paradise or Wally’s Spa, they did their boozing at the country club which then stood over on Derry Heights, but they wanted to make sure that none of those barbags or peavey-swingers got polluted by the blacks of Company E.
‘So Major Fuller says, «I never wanted them here in the first place. I keep thinking it’s an oversight and they’ll get sent back down south or maybe to New Jersey.»
‘»That’s not my problem,» this old fart tells him. Mueller, I think his name was — ‘
‘Sally Mueller’s father?’ I asked, startled. Sally Mueller was in the same high-school class with me.
My father grinned a sour, crooked little grin. ‘No, this would have been her uncle. Sally Mueller’s dad was off in college somewhere then. But if he’d been in Derry, he would have been there, I guess, standing with his brother. And in case you’re wondering how true this part of the story is, all I can tell you is that the conversation was repeated to me by Trevor Dawson, who was swabbing the floors over there in officers’