Gone Fishin' by Walter Mosley

‘Dom wanna be a preacher, Ease. He
always readin’ the Bible an’ whatnot. You know he’s
a well-learnt boy, that ole white woman Dixon make him read
ev’rythang.’
    ‘Who’s
that?’ I asked, suddenly jealous of that freak’s
knowledge. ‘How come she gonna teach him his letters?’
    ‘Just
a crazy white woman, Ease. She ain’t got no knittin’ so
she take on charities.’
    We came to
the clearing after an hour or so.
    Dom’s
house was an abandoned molasses shack. It was small and dilapidated
but it was also nice because he had flowers growing all around it.
Sunflowers on either side and golden wild rose bushes along the
pebbled path that led to the front door. There were thick leafy
bushes of pink dahlias at odd places in the yard. It looked as though
all the flowering plants were wild but I knew they weren’t
because there were no weeds to be seen. Sweet pea vines wound up the
loose timbers that shored up the east wall of the shack. Purple
passion fruit flowers knotted through the ash branches that
surrounded the dale. There were other flowers of white and red but I
didn’t know what kind they were, and neither did Dom.
    Underneath
the sweet peas was a clear patch of earth that was covered with the
body parts of hard-rubber baby dolls. Arms and feet and heads with
golden and brown hair. Mostly they were white dolls like the
well-to-do white children have but there were some colored ones too.
It looked like a pile of infant corpses washed up from their tiny
graves in a terrible storm.
    ‘You
got chirren, Dom?’ I asked.
    He gave a
high squeal that might have been pleasure and said, ‘Them there
is my chirren, Easy.’ Then he chuckled and Mouse did too.
    Dom said
that his ‘room’ was too small for all us guests, so he
went in and came out with three crates for us to sit on. It was very
pleasant to sit out there in his wild yard. A garden as beautiful as
any I’d seen in the rich part of Houston; it was almost like an
inside room or greenhouse only with the sky for a roof. I told Dom
how much I liked it and he smiled.
    ‘I’m
always doin’ sumpin’ t’make it bettah,’ he
said. ‘I’ma start puttin’ in fruit trees next year
an’ by the time they grows maybe I have me a wife t’share
‘em wit’.’ He looked out over his garden with that
terrible smile and dead eye.
    ‘Well,
Dom, we got yo’ fish, now what you got fo’me?’
Mouse said in his taking-care-of-business voice.
    ‘I
got it, Ray, right in the house.’
    ‘Well
let’s have it. Easy an’ me got some miles t’cover
fo’ we can rest.’
    There were
hummingbirds at the sweet peas, flicking in and out of the blossoms
so fast you could hardly tell they were there. I felt funny,
light-headed, but I didn’t want it to change. It seemed to me
that this was the Eden Dom talked about; like he built his own garden
right out of the Bible.
    ‘Here
you go, Ray.’ Dom handed Mouse a doll that had been burned and
mutilated. It had once been a white baby doll but the hard-rubber
skin was now burnt black and the clothes it wore were the overalls
that a farmer wore. The brown hair was clipped short and the arms
were straight out as if it were being crucified on an invisible
cross. The eyes were painted over as the wide white eyes you see on a
man when he’s frightened and trying to see everything coming
his way.
    Mouse
smiled and took the doll from Dom. It seemed that Dom was a little
uneasy about giving away his ugly toy but I knew that it was hard
saying no to Mouse.
    ‘Thank
you, brother,’ Mouse said. ‘DaddyReese gonna just love
it.’
    Mouse’s
laugh filled Dom’s garden until all the flowers seemed to
vibrate with it.
     
     
Chapter Six
     
    ‘What’s
that doll fo’?’ I asked Mouse.
    We’d
been walking for miles. He was moody again, the way he’d been
when he and Etta first got engaged.
    ‘Just sumpin’, man. Nuthin’.’
    ‘You went th’ough all that fo’nuthin’?’
    ‘It’s sumpin’, I tole ya!’
    It