Free Gone Fishin' by Walter Mosley Page B

strangers.’
    She was
quiet for a while and I didn’t dare to speak.
    Then she
said, ‘I’ll get you some covers and that tea.’
    When she’d
given me the blankets and medicine she said good night and went up to
bed.
    I was
feeling tired but better and I could think for a while before going
to sleep. I thought about that grasshopper crushed in that jay’s
beak and about Miss Dixon; how she was like a bird too.

    A lot of
people might not like how I acted with that white woman. They might
ask: Why didn’t he get mad? or Why would Mouse be breaking his
butt to get money out of a poor farmer when this rich white lady
would be so much of a better target?
    Mouse was
just doing what came natural to him. But there’s a reason I
wasn’t angry then, why I’m still not angry and why the
people of Pariah didn’t rise up and kill that woman: It’s
what I call the ‘Sacred Cow Thinking.’
    Miss Dixon
lived alone out in a colored community that hated her because she
owned everything, even the roads they walked on. But Miss Dixon, and
every other white person, was, to that colored community, like the
cow is to those Hindus over in India. They’d all starve to
death, let their children starve, before they’d slaughter a
sacred cow. Miss Dixon was our sacred cow. She had money and land and
she could read and go to fine events at the governor’s house.
But most of all she was white and being white was like another step
to heaven…
    Killing
her would have been worse than killing our own children; killing her,
or even thinking of it, would be like killing the only dream we had.
     
     
Chapter Eight
     
    The next
morning we had breakfast but I pretended to be sicker than I felt and
lay back down on the yellow couch after we ate.
    It was
nice that she took me in but it was strange too. I felt in danger
whenever she looked at me.
    At noon I was saved by a knock on the door.
    ‘Domaque Harker,’ Miss Dixon said through the closed
screen.
    ‘How you do, Miss Dixon?’
    ‘Very fine, and how are you?’
    ‘I’m fine too, ma’am.’
    ‘And your mother?’
    ‘I
ain’t seen her in two, three days, ma’am, but I’m
sure she’s fine and would wanna know that your health is fine
too.’
    Dom was
speaking slower than he had when I was with him. I figured that Miss
Dixon was teaching him how to talk as well as read.
    ‘And
what story are you working on now, Domaque?’
    ‘I’m
workin’ on Noah’s tale, ma’am.’
    All of
this talk was still through the dosed screen.
    ‘And
how does that go?’
    ‘How
Noah saw the storm comin’ an’ how he gathered all the
married children an’ all the pairs of animals. How he rode the
storm of God’s righteous anger in love of his wife and his
chirren an’ their chirren…’
    ‘That’s
the way you have to do it. Make it your own.’
    She opened
the door with that and Domaque shambled in. That skinny woman and
barrel-shaped hunchback looked so strange standing there amongst the
umbrella stands and mirrors. To look at them you would say that they
had nothing in common. But there they were understanding each other
so well that they could have been good friends, or even blood. They
would never even sit down at the same table to break bread. But
they’d get together and tell each other stories and laugh and
be happy. I remember feeling loneliness watching them.
    Miss Dixon
asked us to stay to dinner but Dom said that we had to be going,
being polite I guess. She gave us some sandwiches and fruit in a
paper bag to eat on the way.
    I was
hoping that she’d let me keep her uncle’s suit but she
didn’t. My clothes smelled all the worse for the few hours of
cleanliness that I’d been given.
    She waved
goodbye from the front porch like a mother sending her kids off to
school. I felt bad about leaving in some ways. I had never stayed in
such a fine house and I liked it; but I was glad to be clear of that
strange white lady.
    ‘She
funny, huh?’ Domaque asked.
    ‘Yeah,
I guess. She