David Haynes
On the American Heritage Trail
Another day at the Mount Vernon Economy House Motel, and a season of optimism has of recent taken root. Carlos and his crew of sheetrockers had more work than they could handle. At six they returned to the motel flush with cash, white dust powdering brown faces and wiry black hair. Several of the boys gather at the desk, miming for Humphrey their desire to purchase the international calling cards that Mr. Patel kept on a console next to the lottery ticket display. Most of that cash they’d wire home, those boys—wherever the hell home was—the rest they’d spend on bootleg CDs and cheap wine from the shop up the way with the Spanish signs in the window. Or on the working girls, whose own response to the good times had been a noticeable extra wiggle in the walk and, on more than a few girls, a new pair of nylons to replace ones ratty from wear.
Humphrey worked the evening shift at the motel’s desk, officially four to midnight, but on most nights he was here until at least two. Patel worked the balance of the hours, and Patel’s mother, who owned the dump, would just as soon her son lived behind the desk. The old woman, a shrill, hawk-nosed harpy, stormed into the motel office now and again, as she made the rounds of her sundry properties up and down Route One, from here down to well past Quantico. She’d breeze in, shrouded in layers of shiny loud fabrics and start into her son about one thing or another, finger in his face, rapid fire delivery. Now and again she’d swat him upside the head. Humphrey didn’t know a word of their language but he knew that this was one unpleasant old broad and he also knew that all the son ever said in reply to her was, Yes, Ma’am, whatever you want Ma’am, right away Ma’am. After she left, the poor guy would sit at his desk, head in his hands, mumbling.
Somehow two years back Patel had convinced the mother to allow him to bring on someone to take a shift behind the desk—on the guise, Humphrey imagined, that doing so would free up Patel to supervise the endless and badly needed renovations that were also his responsibility. Now and again, while Humphrey oversaw the comings and goings in the lobby, Patel would rip the carpeting from one of the casual rooms, toss a threadbare bedspread into the skip out back. Most of the time he slept.
Humphrey wasn’t entirely sure why he’d been offered the job, or, for that matter, why he’d accepted. A couple of hours out of DC lockup on a bum shoplifting rap, and he’d found himself wandering Route 1, looking for a cheap bed. He’d heard about this place, although the nightly rate Patel had quoted hadn’t been exactly cheap. He’d inquired about the small “help wanted” sign, figuring it was worth a shot. If he’d learned anything in lockup it was as a so-called ex-con, you took every shot came your way and more or less expected to come up short in the game.
“You seem presentable enough,” Patel had said, and then had added, “I believe you to be someone I might trust.” No questions, no history, no references. The Economy House was that kind of place. At the time and to this day it seemed to Humphrey some kind of miracle that he’d chosen to walk in here that afternoon. Minimum wage, barely, but the room was included, as it was also included for the housekeepers, of which they were down one as of late—that Josepha girl having slunk off into the night sometime in the past week, who knew to where. Generally speaking, they didn’t come back, those girls. Humphrey had picked up some of the slack himself, running the industrial washers and the vacuum. He drew the line at changing beds. He knows what goes on back there.
Misti stops by the desk on the way back from the nail salon in the ratty little strip mall across the highway. Misti is freelance these days, on the run and hiding here from her latest pimp.
“Yo, Hump, what you think?” she asks, waving her ten new tips in his face. Misti’s maybe twenty, looks thirty. Each tip is a different psychedelic design.
“Looking good,” he tells her. He’s pleased for the distraction. It’s the last night of the month, and Patel’s left Humphrey the job of preparing the long-term manifest: Who’s paid in full for July and who’s locks would be changed in the morning.
Misti snaps her gum, snaps it again. She beckons Humphrey to lean closer.
“Between you and me, some of them Mexican boys like it a little rough.” She makes one hand into a claw, flutters an eyelid, and waggles her tongue limply from the corner of her mouth.
“I’m not sure those boys are from Mexico,” he tells her, remembering Carlos’ litany of other places Humphrey remembered vaguely from middle school geometry: Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras.
“Whatever,” Misti replies. Snap. Snap. She taps a paisley nail with a day-glo striped one. Misti is vaguely ethnic herself, in that pop star kind of way: tan, petite and with a bundle of platinum frosted brown hair clipped Kewpie-doll style a top her head.
A three-toned whistle trills around the corner—a human lipped riff on whippoorwill—and Misti rubs her fingers together to indicate a pending transaction.
As per instructions, Humphrey sees nothing, hears nothing. He returns to his manifest, scans down the list to room 317. M. Jackson. July paid in full. Good girl, he thinks. Safe bet that her name was neither Misti nor Jackson, though chances were good her initials were MJ. Your AKAs tended to keep things simple that way.
Across the lobby Mrs. Ralph Wallingford rifles through a rack of brochures hyping dinner cruises on the Potomac and tours of obscure plantations. The sound of any car engine causes her to bolt to the window and brush open the vertical blinds. The vertical blinds are ancient and have turned a grey tone from neglect. Each of Mrs. Ralph Wallingford’s forays to the plate glass sends a cloud of dust Humphrey’s way. Mrs. Ralph Wallingford is not paid in full. Has not been so for more than a few weeks.
“Oh, dear,” she sighs when the ride is once again not for her. She drops herself to a love seat and once again pages through the June issue of Hospitality Today. Too cheap for real magazines, Patel’s mother stocks the lobby with industry rags only. Mrs. Ralph Wallingford has surely read this one cover-to-cover by now, could recite from memory, surely, recent trends in occupancy rates and suggestions for turning your property’s pool into a tropical oasis.
“I was sure that would be my son-in-law,” she says. Humphrey is the only one in the lobby just now, so he imagines this is directed at him. And although he knows better than to respond to her, he turns his hands up in a way that he hopes indicates that he’s sorry, that it isn’t his fault, that it’s beyond his control, and that, no, there have been no messages left at the front desk for her today just as there also have been none for the past ten weeks since she was dropped off here by a cab.
Humphrey had been on duty the night she’d checked in. Drop-ins were rare in the spring. Now and again a road warrior would pull in, recognizing the corporate logo, but those old boys were no fools. They’d take one look at that courtyard, get an earful of the pumping salsa and a gander at who lingered inside the open doorways and know immediately they’d made a mistake. Unless there was an ice storm, they’d head on down route one looking for something more appropriate. Unless they were up for extracurricular fun. Patel’s policy: a cheerful refund. The mother made enough on the monthlies she couldn’t care less about the dozen rooms the franchise required be open for casual traffic. Rent em by the hour to the whores, she’d said. (Well, since Humphrey didn’t speak their language, he couldn’t prove she’d said exactly that, but it was another one of those things he’d take book on.)
She’d printed “Mrs. Ralph Wallingford” on her guest card, the woman had, her handwriting of the cheerful and confident variety. Well formed and well spaced, the sort of signature he imagined graced million-dollar contracts or presidential pardons.
“I’ll be needing three nights, if that’s okay,” she’d informed him and she’d placed on the counter the first of what would soon become a series of maxed-out credit cards.
Humphrey remembered at the time having the same inclination he’d always had when someone such as her happened in off the road: he had wanted to beckon her closer so he could whisper to her that she might want to think again about her choice of accommodations. A fine lady such as yourself, he had wanted to tell her. Her hair, a one-tone brownish red, had been recently coiffed into one of those middle-aged white lady styles that is all layers of fat curls, and she’d been wearing one of those nice pant suits women of her age and class wore to the doctor’s office or to a PTA meeting.
It mostly happened during the summer tourist season that these straight types would wander in, often a young family on a budget, come east to show the kiddies their nation’s heritage, including the first president’s home, conveniently located a few short miles to the north. Hell, you could walk there from here. Often enough, around midnight, the weary father, frustrated at the ongoing boogedy beat in the courtyard, stormed down to the lobby to ask Humphrey what kind of joint he thought they were running around here. Humphrey would throw up his hands and invite him to speak with the management in the morning. In the morning Patel would pass along his mother’s business card. Case closed.
“Some of these people,” Humphrey had suggested at the time. “We should warn them maybe.”
Patel’s reply: “That would imply that you were aware that there were activities going on here that might cause concern to our guests. We are not aware of anything of the sort, are we?” As was always the case he had not looked up from the task of the moment. He had addressed Humphrey in a voice that British professors employ on some PBS show. Humphrey had assured Patel that he was as unaware as the next person. A job was a job after all. And ignorance was a relative quality, and a highly prized commodity in some markets.
The courtyard smelled of ganja and of curry. When flush, the sheetrock boys now and again enjoyed something stronger than wine and, as for the curry, cousins of Patel’s held down the two rooms nearest the laundry. Hot, noisy, and hard to rent, maybe a dozen folks lived in those two rooms, always cooking something on their electric burners, and always with the door open. Just across the way the working girls clustered on the patio tables by the pool, where they trash talk each other’s costumes while awaiting their whistles. Another ordinary day in the cradle of democracy.
Upon check in, Mrs. Ralph Wallingford already had that deer-in-the-headlights look in her eyes, so there was no telling if the Economy House scene caused further distress. Two months in the motel had taken their toll on the poor creature; the neatly arranged hair gone slightly matted for lack of styling tools, blouses now a dingy off-white from too many washings in the sink with the brick hard wax that the Economy House passed off as soap.
Another car engine revs in the parking lot. Mrs. Ralph Wallingford, Humphrey notes, takes a moment longer than usual to hop up, then does so sluggishly, just as Carlos comes in the courtyard door. Carlos stands at the desk, fingering through the bills in his wallet in that way he has, mumbling to himself some song in Spanish. Humphrey goes and stands at the counter on the off chance Carlos wants something other than what he usually wants—which is simply someone to shoot the breeze with. (“Humid tonight.” “Slow this evening.” “You catch those Wizards?”)
Mrs. Ralph Wallingford comes and stands behind Carlos. She does this whenever there is another guest at the counter. Large purse over one elbow, she stands, patient—the way she has been taught—working to catch Humphrey’s eye. This was her technique for asking to use the phone. She seemed to figure that when the clerk was busy with another guest, he’d be too preoccupied to give her request a second thought. She persists, despite the fact that Patel cut her off her house phone privileges a week ago.
To avoid making eye contact, Humphrey finds and then slides a USA Today article Carlos’ way—one about amnesty for aliens.
“Every one of my boys is legal,” Carlos laughs. Now and again, for spite or for sport, someone would call ICE to the construction site and Carlos would return that evening with an empty van. He and Humphrey would load the boys rag tag possessions into a few boxes and set them in storage. None had ever found his way back here for anything. The next evening Carlos would return with a brand new set of boys.
Mrs. Ralph Wallingford clears her throat, demurely.
“Excuse me, señora,” Carlos says, stepping away with a bow. She gives him the false and cautious smile that here lately has become her trademarked reply to his Latin charms. Even after two months she’s unsure what to make of what she’d no doubt refer to as one of “those people.”
“I was wondering if I might . . .” Mrs. Ralph Wallingford stared, and she made the universal sign for phone call—thumb at the ear, pinky at the lips.
The words “You know what Mr. Patel says” start from Humphrey’s mouth; instead he sighs, places the machine on the counter, pushes the outgoing button for her. “Local only, remember.”
Mrs. Ralph Wallingford smiles, bats her eyes closed in a way that suggests he’s being foolish to think a quality person such as herself would even consider mounting unauthorized long-distance charges. She begins dialing from the numbers on her list.
Here lately, this past week or so, no one answers whatever phones those numbers correspond to and apparently everyone has also disconnected his or her voicemail.
“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Ralph Wallingford says. She sighs. She dials the next number on the list.
Carlos gives Humphrey one of those “the mystery of women” looks, a combination of raised shoulders and rolled eyes. Just then Patel shuffles in, his house slippers rasping on the floor, rumpled blue striped pajamas open to the naval. He scratches at his hairy stomach, nods and grunts at the men. Seeing Mrs. Ralph Wallingford on the phone, he grunts again at Humphrey, proceeds to look on the desk for whatever he’d risen from the middle of his own personal night to find. He signals Humphrey to follow him out the courtyard door.
“That woman . . .” Patel seethes. No need to say much more, really, at least not as far as Humphrey is concerned. Something about her set this man off, certainly not the least being the fact Mrs. Ralph Wallingford hadn’t paid a cent in rent for the past three weeks.
“A phone call,” Humphrey pleads. “I figure what could it hurt.”
Patel harrumphs. “People like her . . .” he mumbles. He ruffles his own hair some more. “I tell you what, Humphrey:” Patel always pronounces Humphrey’s name as if it contanined no “F” sound—Humpree, he calls him. “You tell that woman she must go. Tonight. No more extensions. No nothing.”
Humphrey is not surprised; had hoped that however it happened with the poor woman it would happen while he was across the courtyard sound asleep. For whatever reason he finds himself pleading her case.
“Give her another couple of days,” he suggests.
“Couple of days for what? I’ll tell you for what. I’ve seen her kind. She goes. I’m ordering you. You tell her.”
“Me tell her?” Humphrey complains. “You’re ordering me?”
Patel paces over to the back courtyard entrance and glances in. Mrs. Ralph Wallingford, Humphrey is sure, is still in there dialing her little heart out. Humphrey meets Patel’s eye with a wry smile. They have the kind of communication developed only between people who have been together up to their elbows in other people’s human waste.
“Okay, okay,” Patel says, raising his hands to indicate he’s backing down. “I don’t say order. I say implore. I implore you. Please. Show this woman the door. Otherwise, what choice?” Patel rubs his hands together, washing them of the whole matter.
“Or until we need the room,” Humphrey proffers.
Patel scoffs. “Or until my mother.” He barks the word mother in Humphrey’s face as if it were a swear word. “Mother comes tomorrow at two.” Patel places a hand on the ledger for emphasis. Once a month the crone spent the afternoon teasing through the books, quibbling over every dime. Humphrey knows what will happen. She’d find 207, note the arrears, swat Patel upside the head, and then personally dump Mrs. Ralph Wallingford right in the middle of Route 1.
“I implore you,” Patel repeats. He shuffles back toward his apartment. He nods at another half-asleep man, scuffling toward the candy machine wearing only his BVDs. It’s that kind of place.
Between dials, the desk phone rings. Mrs. Ralph Wallingford says “Oh, my,” and hands the phone to Humphrey. As good an excuse as any to relieve her of from her pointless routine. Trooper that she is, Mrs. Ralph Wallingford raises her eyebrows with hope. The voice on the line jabbers something rapidly. Humphrey shakes his head, causing Mrs. Ralph Wallingford to step away from the desk.
“Don’t understand!” he yells into the phone.
“131,” comes the crispy enunciated reply, and Humphrey connects them to that room. He’d been surprised his first days in this place how few calls came on the house phone. He’d figured he’d maybe be spending his days like a receptionist on a bad TV show, parroting the name of the motel over and over again, but in fact it almost never rang. When it did ring it was either Patel’s mother shouting her son’s name or a wrong number.
Many years ago, in a biology course at UDC, back during Humphrey’s short-lived college career, he remembered learning about ecological bioregions, self-contained worlds within worlds. The Mount Vernon Economy House could be such a world. Busses to the city stopped out front, delivering and returning those who had jobs—else they headed off with Carlos or someone just like him. Folks like himself and like Lisette the Haitian maid and like Misti, worked right here. All of them ate fast food from the convenience store. There were no calls because everyone they knew was already here—else far enough away to be as theoretical as dreams.
The kid named Kyle comes into the lobby. He and Carlos exchange nods. They are professional rivals: Kyle is hooked up with a crew doing interior build out over in Springfield.
“Settle up,” Kyle says, not a threat, rather an offer to get it over with. He splays on the counter the pages of invoices accounting for his last month’s keep. The manifest indicates he had nothing down on the month ahead, but Kyle insists he’s good through the tenth.
“See, here,” the kid indicates. He points to a place on one of the pages where the printer seemed to have stuttered, then to another where Patel’s initialed a credit of what looks like two hundred bucks. Kyle’s right arm is all tattoos, from his wrist up to his shoulder blade. Both ears contain a lot of metal. He’s a “local” Humphrey knows, has people over in Dumfries. They threw him out or he threw himself out—same difference. He lived here now.
“They keeping you busy?” Carlos asks the kid, who blows air through his lips, nods. He’s not much on words, ever, this Kyle.
“You let me know, okay? I always got room for a good worker.”
Humphrey doubts Kyle will work for whatever bits Carlos crumbles out to his boys, but it’s not his concern. Humphrey skims down the manifest and clears Kyle through the tenth.
Just then Misti comes limping around the corner. She’s lost the heel from one of her platform shoes and is whimpering. Blood leaks from a swelling lip.
“Damn animal,” she hisses. The kid Kyle steadies her against the counter.
Carlos purses his lips and raises his eyebrows, more bemused than concerned it seems.
“Are you okay,” Humphrey asks her. Officially he’s to ignore this sort of thing. Officially there’s no such thing as “this sort of thing.”
“One of those Mexican boys. I gave him a half and half and he started yelling about más and about his dinero. Then he went psycho.”
She tells Carlos the room number. It’s one of his boys so he heads back there to check it out. That’s how this world works: you see to your own mess.
Misti’s really working hard to be tough—spews an accomplished string of vulgarity and choice threats about what she’ll do to “Juan” when she gets her hands on him again—but Humphrey sees that she is trembling hard and that her eyes have gone wide like a little girl’s at a horror movie. That is what, in fact she is: a little girl.
Just then, Mrs. Ralph Wallingford comes with a towel and some ice from the machine. She gathers Misti into her arms.
“Come over here, sweetheart,” Mrs. Ralph Wallingford says. Misti collapses sobbing into her arms and Mrs. Ralph Wallingford leads her to a couch.
Later, after Carlos reports that the boy—whoever he had been—is long gone, after Misti decides to take the rest of the night off, Mrs. Ralph Wallingford sits on her regular couch, flipping through her regular magazine.
Humphrey turns the deadbolt on the door to the street. After ten, it’s transactions through the night window only. He sits down next to Mrs. Ralph Wallingford. Flipping the lock is his signal for her to leave the lobby, but tonight she doesn’t budge. She peruses the magazine solemnly, the bloodied damp towel on the end table beside her.
“A little excitement there, huh?” he says to her.
“That poor young woman,” Mrs. Ralph Wallingford responds, and she clicks her tongue. Some of Misti’s makeup has adhered to the front of her blazer, sparkly flecks here and there among the herringbone.
Humphrey should be asking her for rent money, should be finishing up that manifest, should be clearing today’s receipts, should be over behind the desk just chilling. But it’s okay to sit here a minute. It feels just fine for some reason.
Mrs. Ralph Wallingford speaks.
“Can I ask you a question, Mr. . . . Why I’ve seen you all these many days and I realized I don’t know your name.”
“People call me Humphrey.”
“That girl, that young woman. She’s a prostitute, am I correct, Mr. Humphrey?”
“I believe that she is.”
“Yes.” Mrs. Ralph Wallingford says, quietly, sadly, nodding her head. Her hands are folded in her lap like an honor student waiting her turn outside the principal’s office. Her nails, Humphrey notices, had at some point been manicured. Several are now tattered edged and rimmed an angry looking red.
The traffic on Route One slows this time of night. Humphrey can hear an engine now and again roar through the valley. There’s almost no chance one of those cars will pull in. He could sit here all night with no reason to move.
“Mr. Humphrey, did you ever in your life think you’d end up in a place like this?”
Her question reels him slightly, visibly.
“Did I startle you? Forgive me.”
“Oh, ma’am… you didn’t… it’s just that…”
“Me: I did not. I doubt that surprises you.”
Humphrey shakes his head. He wants to tell this woman that there are many worse places in the world than this one. Much worse. He understands that such an observation would be beyond the point really.
Over the past two months he has often imagined the people at the other end of the calls she makes, the ones where she wonders if she might trouble this one for a bed for a few nights or whether that one might have a spare room. There was a son, evidently, but he’d proved difficult to locate. Worked itinerant, perhaps overseas. There was bad blood with the daughter that the mother now wanted—needed—to heal. These one-sided conversations were hard to read; even so, any fool could see that Mrs. Ralph Wallingford had left in her wake a broad legacy of hurt feelings and broken connections. This was a woman who wore her difficultness on her sleeve and with a great deal of pride. She might be impossible to love.
“Bridges get burnt, the world turns. And here we are,” she pronounces, as if reading his mind. If anything she sounds philosophical.
As a boy, Humphrey had dreamed of doing medical research—of being one of those people who discovered the secret mechanism inside the cancer cells that had taken his mother when he was sixteen. Schools—the schools little black boys attended—did not prepare you for careers in oncology. Instead, he had removed dead tree limbs; changed tires and oil; flipped burgers and drained hot fish fillets; stocked shelves at the CVS; detailed cars at the Mazda dealer in Charles County, Maryland; delivered pizzas and summonses and legal briefs; unloaded exotic produce from bellies of 747s at Dulles Airport. Twice in his life he’s worked as a bouncer at a club. For a week and a half he’d been an “exotic dancer.” The pay had been good, but he’d broken out from the oils he’d been required to slather himself in to make himself shine under the light. He’s made cold calls selling newspaper subscriptions and long-distance service and aluminum siding, ran the machine in the Walgreen’s for the old people who still believed in old school cameras, washed dishes, chopped vegetables, driven third world ambassadors between appointments, and most recently, after having the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, made license plates for the citizens of the District of Columbia.
And now he was here. And so was Mrs. Ralph Wallingford. Who says:
“I despise this place. When I step out of bed in the morning, I have the feeling that I am up to my ankles in insect life. And the less said about the shampoo and the raspy towels the better.” She says this with an off-balance smile, Mrs. Ralph Wallingford does, whispering it to him almost from the corner of her mouth, as if they are sharing secrets.
She rises, presses at the wrinkles in her suit. The irons here have all been stolen—sold at the flea market in Woodbridge no doubt.
“Another day passes,” she says. She lifts her key from her purse where it nestles next to a flip phone he imagines hasn’t had service for some time.
“Wait,” he says to her back. There’s something he must tell her that needs to be said immediately.
The next day Humphrey finds himself head-to-toe covered in stinking crumbs from foam padding; Patel has offered him a few extra hours work to strip the rooms on “two east” of their moldering carpet. He takes his time dragging the foul-smelling carpeting to the skip—there’s only this one room on the to-do list today. He’ll sweep out the crumbs, slather the floor with disinfectant and bug juice then lock it up. It will sit empty like the other ten he’s done; apparently Patel’s mother spends half her time ragging him to get the rooms updated, the other half refusing to sign off on anything to update them with.
By the laundry room Patel’s female cousins are gathered around a patio table, prepping some strange pod-like vegetable he’s never seen.
“Good day, Mr. Humpree,” they nod shyly, the same f-less version Patel employs.
Humphrey organizes the chairs and tables over where Misti and the girls gather for their morning cigarettes and Cokes. It’s well past two, but it’s only the start of their workday.
“Hey Hump,” Misti calls to him. He steps over. Her lip she’s shrouded with pink gloss with a pearly finish. If anything, their bee-stung quality has been enhanced.
“Mai and I was just discussing among ourselves here whether or not a person could get a driver’s license in Virginia without a birth certificate. What you think?”
Humphrey shrugged. “I wouldn’t know about anything like that,” he told them. Mai is an Asian girl—Vietnamese he thinks, or that might be the other one there—Kim he believes she goes by. There’s a Russian or Polish girl who comes and goes and sometimes shares a room with Misti. “One of you girls thinking about driving?” he asks.
The girls all laugh like that’s some big joke. Considering what cars cost, he guesses that’s the funny part.
“That convenience store over there, the one with the cheaper beer, gots a new guy running it, some Arab dude. He won’t sell without a state ID. Ain’t that a blip?”
Humphrey’s pretty sure the guy’s Pakistani, not that it mattered. “There’s always the Spanish store,” he suggests, teasing some yellow foam from his hair.
The girls scoff. “We’re boycotting them,” Mai announces. They look at each other with resolve and take drags off their cigarettes.
Kyle struts by, giving the ladies the eye. He nods at Humphrey. The contractor he works for lives out past Manassas and is always on the job well before dawn. Kyle’s already put in his full day. The girls smile their cheap smiles at him. He gets a freebie now and again, according to Misti, because, in her words “Every now and then you get a taste for white meat.”
“Just another day at the ranch,” Misti announces. There’s no trace of irony in her voice. The girls tilt their heads back and soak up the scorching summer sun.
“Check out the new maid,” Misti suggests.
Across the way Lisette removes the padlocks from the supply closet and angles the two carts close to the door. She mimes for the woman where to place the soaps on the cart and how to stand the matchbooks in the ashtray.
Mrs. Ralph Wallingford nods, watches, inventories the items on her own cart while Lisette does the same.
At first Patel had balked at the arrangement—the woman truly set him off—but Humphrey had prevailed.
It was a trial run only. Patel had been fussing with the ledgers for his mother’s review. He’d been nervous, sweaty, irritable, saving his energy for the bigger fight on the horizon. “One problem, she goes,” he warned.
There’d be none, Humphrey knew. Like everyone here, Mrs. Ralph Wallingford had her resources. She could make a bed, scrub a toilet, run a damp cloth across a pasteboard TV stand. Was it glamorous? No. But like everyone here, she’d weighed the alternatives and cut the best deal she could, here on Route One, where the first world, on its way down, meets the third world, holding on by the fingernails to wherever they can get purchase.
“But it’s just so degrading,” Mrs. Ralph Wallingford had said to him last night when he’d told her the plan. A weaker woman would have wept, but while she might have issues, this one had a iron will. She’d lamented her fate with the hard-edged bitterness of a washed up gambler who’d lost his last hundred on the over under.
Humphrey’s response to her judgment had initially been to go ahead and show her the door, but he understood she had only been speaking the truth. Here was a long way from wherever she’d come from. Now and again, he would think of that pleasant little house in Petworth where he’d lived as a boy, the one that the medical bills demolished. Yes: It took some getting used to, this life. But that’s what one did: Get used to it.
Across the way, Mrs. Ralph Wallingford and Lisette the Haitian maid fold dryer-hot towels into efficient bricks. The ones that don’t fit on the cart they stow away in the supply room.
Mrs. Ralph Wallingford fumbles with a face cloth. She can’t make the neat shape Lisette does and she tosses the thing away with frustration.
Humphrey watches Lisette come over behind her and lift the next one from the bin into which they unload the dryer. She moves her hands slowly, demonstrating for the older woman the elegance of the fold. Like this, Humphrey imagines Lisette saying, although he’s fairly sure those are words Lisette doesn’t know.
This way. Like this. One side meets the other, then turn it again. Then again. Then another. This is how we do it here. This is the way it’s done.
David Haynes
David Haynes is the author of seven novels for adults and five books for younger readers. He is an emeritus professor of English at Southern Methodist University, where he directed the creative writing program for ten years. Since 1996 he has taught regularly in MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, and has also taught writing at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Hamline University, at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD, and at the Writers’ Garret in Dallas. He has received a fellowship from the Minnesota State Arts Board, and several of his short stories have been read and recorded for the National Public Radio series “Selected Shorts.” His most recently new novel is A STAR IN THE FACE OF THE SKY, and in 2023 he published a 30th anniversary edition of RIGHT BY MY SIDE as part of the Penguin Classic series. He is also the author of a series for children called “The West Seventh Wildcats.” His upcoming book is a collection, MARTHA’S DAUGHTER: A NOVELLA AND STORIES.
David serves as Board Chair for Kimbilio, a community of writers and scholars committed to developing, empowering and sustaining fiction writers from the African diaspora and their stories.