Free The Girl With the Golden Shoes by Colin Channer Page A

who only cuss his boss behind his back? she thought. A man like that is a two-face man. You suppose to say what you feel. ’Cause talk is what make a man greater than a beast. And when you say behind a man what you want to say to his face you showing him something. You showing him that he’s a man and you is some kind o’ mule for him to ride, or some kind o’ dog for him to kick around. And people who take so much kick and ride, they mind weak. And they will talk you business when the pressure start to come. That’s exactly what happen to me. My own friends who was there when that man come out the waves tell lie and spread rumor ’pon me. They ’fraid o’ what come out their parents’ mouth.
    “Let it rest,” she told the driver. “Let it rest. But something happen to me that make me sick down to my soul.”
    In his head he said, This subject needs a change .
    “I hear that fire burning down in Black Well,” he said.
    “Which part is that?” she asked.
    “On the way to town.”
    “I never hear ’bout no place name so. Which part is that? And when you say burning, what kind o’ burning you mean?”
    “I ain’t really know. A man tell me today that they was burning down there again. You ain’t know which part Black Well is?”
    She shook her head and made a grunt.
    “That is where Salan get the Yankee them to fill up the swamp so he could plant the cane. The same place we old people call New Lagos is the same place name Black Well now. When I was a young man a Yankee priest name Father Eddie…Eddie Blackwell was his name…use to do some things out there. Have woman and all, I hear. Maybe that’s why they call it so. But still, it have some o’ the blackest nigger man you ever see out there. So maybe that’s why they call it so.”
    “You mean where it have some houses in the water on the poles?” she asked. “And sometimes out there you could catch manatee?”
    “Same one.”
    “Yes. I know out there.”
    After they’d driven for a mile in silence, which Estrella utilized to prep her mind to walk, the driver took a hand from off the wheel.
    Looking at the girl, her tousled hair, her diamond face, her upper lip, which was encroaching on her nose, he began to rub the leather knob that crowned the long gear stick that slanted from the floor.
    I ain’t able for this rass , Estrella thought. I ain’t able for this rass right now. But you almost there. It can’t turn into nothing big. If he try to force you then it have to be a fight.
    “You have a boyfriend?” he began.
    “I might,” she said flatly.
    “You do or you don’t?”
    “Why you want to know?”
    “I have a son,” he said nobly. “A nice boy. The youngest one. Nineteen years old with a good trade. He’s a mechanic down at Royal Standard. He’s a man can fix anything that break. But is only Indian girls he like. That woman in the red bandanna who just cuss me off, she carrying bad feelings for me. Why? It have a rumor that my son fooling with her girl. But that ain’t true. My son have taste. My son know better than that. My son is a educated boy. Can read and write. And her daughter would see her name on a envelope with money and use it to wipe her ass. By the way, how old you be?”
    “Old enough,” she said, smiling.
    “I ain’t want none o’ them town girls for my son. Them girls have too much guile. He need a nice country girl with ambition. A girl who could read and write.” He raised his hand to make the point. “And she must be pretty too. What man want a bright, ambitious monkey in the bed?”
    Estrella laughed.
    “I ain’t making joke,” he said. “Is a serious thing. Just like no woman ain’t have no use for no fat man. No man ain’t have no use for no ugly woman. And that is fat or slim! When you wake up in the morning and you head ain’t settle yet, you ain’t want to turn and see a face that could stop you heart from beat.”
    “So you think I pretty or you making talks?”
    “Baby, if I make