Free God Don’t Like Ugly by Mary Monroe Page B

mind.
    “What’s wrong with you, girl? I’m lucky to be alive after all the walkin’ I done did today,” Mr. Boatwright snapped. There were times I forgot about his fake leg and the fact that he was an old man. “All these packages we totin’ too. Let’s get to that pay phone yonder and call a cab.” The nearby pay phone at the corner in front of Thurman’s Pharmacy was out of order. “Maybe that drugstore there got one. Start steppin’, girl.”
    I followed Mr. Boatwright inside the drugstore. While he went to the back to use the phone, I waited on a stool at the soda counter with our packages, enjoying the air-conditioning and a strawberry milk shake.
    A well-dressed Black man in his mid-forties entered. With his head held high and his shoulders back, he strutted like a king, greeting some of the other customers with a nod and a smile. He was tall like my daddy, but much more handsome. He looked a lot like Mama’s favorite entertainer, Harry Belafonte. He had dark brown skin, full lips, wavy black hair, and, of all things, green eyes. He nodded and smiled at me, revealing a set of dazzling white teeth. I smiled back and watched him stop at the counter in back of the drugstore where they filled prescriptions. Mr. Boatwright returned with a tortured look on his face.
    “What’s the matter?” I asked.
    “We ain’t got enough to cover no cab from here to the house. Damn that bus!” he hissed. “I guess—” he stopped and shaded his eyes. He was looking at the Black man with the movie-star looks. “Ain’t that Brother Nelson yonder there?”
    “Who?”
    “The undertaker that own that big white house directly across the street from us. He come up to me when I was in the yard the other day and introduced hisself,” Mr. Boatwright explained. We watched the man walk toward us, still smiling. He reached out and shook Mr. Boatwright’s hand so hard I thought Mr. Boatwright was going to fall.
    “How’re you feelin’, Boatwright?” the man drawled in a deep, husky, slightly Southern accent. “It’s good to see you again.”
    I pushed my milk shake aside and leaped up off my seat, smoothing the sides of my cheap corduroy jumper.
    “Oh I’m fair to middlin’. The Lord’s good to me, Brother Nelson.” Mr. Boatwright nodded in my direction. “This the young’n live in the same house with me and her mama. I know you done seen her up and down that tree shuckin’ it for them buckeye nuts. Annette, this Brother Nelson.”
    “Hi, Mr. Nelson,” I said shyly.
    He shook my trembling hand. “I got a girl around your age. She’s spendin’ her summer vacation with her aunt down South,” Mr. Nelson told me. “Uh…look like you folks got a lot of shoppin’ done there.”
    “Yep. We been to the slaughterhouse out on Highway 80. We can’t afford them high-and-mighty prices at Kroger’s and the A&P like you. Me and this girl here go to the slaughterhouse two, three times a month. Even Kroger’s can’t beat them screamin’, meaty pork ribs the slaughterhouse sell, praise the Lord.” Mr. Boatwright laughed, shaking his head.
    “Well I wouldn’t know. We don’t eat pork,” Mr. Nelson informed us with a serious look on his face. “You know, Black folks would be a whole lot healthier if they’d give up certain things, especially pork.”
    I bobbed my head up and down in agreement. “I read about it in that Black Muslim newspaper they go around selling. They say too much pork can kill you,” I offered.
    Mr. Boatwright rolled his eyes at me and sighed with exasperation. “Well mighty funny you wanted to stand in that long line just to get them pork link sausages,” he teased. “That’s why we missed the last bus, and now we ain’t got no way to get home lest we call the po’lice,” Mr. Boatwright complained. He immediately turned to Mr. Nelson and looked at him with pleading eyes.
    “I’m goin’ in your direction. Y’all welcome to ride along with me,” Mr. Nelson told us, opening his