Dirty Rice by Gerald Duff

reaching into my pocket for the bill Dutch gave me. “Is that right?”
    â€œIt is,” she said, taking the five out of my hand and putting it somewhere out of sight in the flowered dress she was wearing. “Now I serve breakfast and supper to y’all. No dinner, though. Y’all are mostly gone all day anyway. No discounts for meals not eaten by y’all. Let me tell you what that means just to get things straight. If the Rice Birds are playing out of town and you have to miss any meal here, I don’t give you no reduction in what you owe me every month. Do you understand that?”
    I said I did. She said we could have more than one serving at a meal, if there was enough left available for that. Sometimes there was, sometimes not. She said she wasn’t in the business of keeping young men fattened up. She didn’t allow alcohol in her house, though she didn’t mind the smoking of cigarettes, as long as the boarders were careful to use ashtrays. She would not allow chewing tobacco or the dipping of snuff. She did not wash anybody’s clothes but her own and her daughter’s. People looking to stay up all night with the lights turned on might as well not move in. Young men should not sing in their rooms or beat on a drum or make use of musical instruments. Each boarder got one key to use. If it got lost, it had to be replaced at the expense of the boarder. She did not furnish material for writing letters. The table and chairs was all she felt obliged to make available for that job. Did I have all that straight?
    â€œYes, ma’am,” I said. “That seems fair and square to me. But can I ask you something?”
    â€œIs it a special consideration of some kind you want?” Miz Doucette said, her eyes snapping.
    â€œNo. I just wonder if the Cuban player has showed up yet, the one Dutch said would be rooming with me in your house.”
    â€œI haven’t met anybody else from the Rice Birds but you,” she said. “Cuban, what does that mean he would be?”
    I told her I didn’t know, and she left me alone in the room after another minute or two, and I laid down on the first real bed I had slept in for almost two weeks. When I woke up, the sun was coming through the window and lighting up the lamb above my head. I didn’t remember dreaming a thing.

5

    After I ate my first meal cooked by Miz Doucette that morning, I took off in a trot for the baseball stadium. When I got there, the big front doors in front were still closed, but there was one off to the side standing open. I could hear people huffing and puffing, and when I went through the door, I saw the reason why.
    I’d say that up to a couple of dozen men were strung out in a ragged line, trotting around the edge of the field. Early as it was, the sun was bearing down, the air was full of water that you couldn’t see but felt like a blanket weighing on you, and Dutch Bernson was sitting on a stool watching the parade pass by him. He caught a glimpse of me when he turned off to one side to spit tobacco juice, and he waved his hand.
    â€œYou the next to last one to get here, Gemar,” he said. “Ain’t you got no alarm clock?”
    â€œNo, sir,” I said. “But I won’t get here late again.”
    â€œIs that the shoes you going to run in? Or you going to try it barefooted?”
    â€œI’ll run in the ones I got on,” I said, and fell in behind a clump of men passing in front of me, most of them not too much older than me but one looking like he was even older than Dutch. His hair was going gray, and he had a belly on him, and he was suffering from the heat and the pace, throwing his head back like he was trying to draw a fuller breath, the sweat just pouring down his face. He was being passed by everybody, no matter how slow they were going.
    I did the same thing, closing in on him before we’d gone fifty feet, and veering out to one side.