Bluff Walk. Charles R. Crawford

kept his business, but I still couldn’t see any sign of a weapon.

      “John, I don’t care where we sit,” Mary said. “Are you going to get in a fight with that man?”

      “No, I don’t think so. Not once he’s talked to the man at the table.”

      I could see him bend over the seated figure, hand him my card and point over at us. Then he straightened up and walked back. He lifted the yellow rope up to head height, and gestured back behind him. “Tommy says come on over,” he said.

      He watched me as we walked under the rope, and I watched him right back. The fact that I couldn’t figure out where he kept his gun made me more, not less, leery of him. I resisted the urge to say I told you so.

      Before we got to the table in the corner, Tommy Traylor stood up and yelled, “John, you old sonofabitch, come on over here!” A few heads turned at the other tables, but they all went right back to partying.

      Tommy was smiling broadly, but his lips stayed together, covering his crooked teeth. He gathered me into a big bear hug, whacking my back hard with his right hand. The top of his bald head glistened pinkly against my chest as I pounded on his wide, fleshy back with my open hand. I had learned from previous encounters that being hugged by Tommy was less embarrassing if you returned his manly backslapping instead of just standing there with your arms trying to reach around him.

      “Goddam, son, you need to put on some weight. I can get my arms clean around you,” he said, grabbing my shoulder and beaming up into my face. “Sit down here and have a plate of swamp chicken with me,” he said, gesturing at a plate stacked with fried meat.

      I half turned to introduce Mary, but before I could say anything he grabbed her and gave her the same hug, without the back beating. Mary, who had learned to expect the unexpected on our dates, hugged him right back. Tommy swiveled his head toward me, and said, “Son, I hate to hurt your feelings, but I’d a lot rather grab aholt of her than you.”

      “I’m relieved to hear it, Tommy,” I said, as he turned back to Mary.

      “Now, what’s your name, sweetheart?” he asked, holding her back away from him.

      Mary didn’t talk a lot but she liked to speak for herself. “My name is Mary Arenduyk,” she said, holding out her right hand. The gesture seemed superfluous after the friendly mauling she had just received, but Tommy took it in both of this and shook it up and down. “I’m Tommy Taylor,” he said. “And I sure am pleased to meet you. Where are you from? England? You don’t talk like us.”

      “The Netherlands,” Mary said. “But that’s close to England.”

      “Well, you sure got a pretty voice. Now sit down here with me,” he said as he pulled out a chair for her.

      A waitress came up to the table as we took chairs on either side of Tommy. Beside Tommys plate of food was an open quart bottle of Jack Daniels’ Black Label that was half gone and a large foam cup that was full of sour mash and crushed ice. The waitress looked like a biker’s girl with her oily jeans, black t-shirt and a tattoo on each forearm. She had bottle blond hair and a face that might have been pretty before the injury that broke her nose and left a four inch long scar across her left cheekbone. Harley wreck or abusive boyfriend, take your pick.

      She leaned on Tommy so that one of the large, sagging breasts under her t-shirt rested on his shoulder. “What are your friends drinking, Tommy?” she asked.

      “What do you want, Mary?” Tommy asked. “Some wine, a beer?”

      “May I have some of your whiskey, please?” she asked him back.

      “Well, sure you can. Do you want a Coke with it?”

      “No, thank you, just a cup of ice like you have,” she said.

      “You heard the lady, sweetie,” he said to the waitress.

      “I’ll take a Bud, please,” I said.

      “A cup of ice and a Budweiser,” Tommy said unnecessarily. “And bring ’em some munchies while they decide what they want for supper.” Tommy reached up and stroked the breast laid out on his shoulder, and the waitress bent down and kissed him on top of his bald head before carrying our order into the kitchen.

      “Is this true love, Tommy? You didn’t even introduce us,” I said.

      “What? Oh, you mean Jessie?” he said. “She’s real pretty, ain’t she?”

      “Yes, she’s very attractive,” I said with a totally straight face.

      “She has beautiful eyes,” Mary said. I hadn’t even noticed Jessie’s eyes, but I had never heard Mary say anything she didn’t mean. Tommy responded to Mary’s obvious sincerity and began to engage her in conversation. Jessie returned quickly with my beer, a cup full of ice for Mary, and a bucket full of more crushed ice. She held a stack of paper plates and two big platters, one of hush puppies and one of UFOs (unidentified fried objects) with a bowl of horseradish dipping sauce in front of Tommy. He gave her a quick smile, but still didn’t offer any introductions.

      Tommy poured a good four or five ounces of whiskey into Mary’s cup, then began heaping a paper plate full of food for her. I listened to him identify the battered covered objects for her: tomato, pickle, chicken, zucchini, shrimp, turtle, and oyster.

      “You decide what you like best then we’ll get you a whole plate,” he said.

      “What is your favorite?” Mary asked, as she took a big swallow of whiskey.

      “I call it swamp chicken, but it’s really soft-shelled turtle,” he said. “A soft-shell will eat anything it can get, dead or alive, so its meat can be a bit strong. Most white people won’t eat it, but I’ve always been partial to it. Now a nigger’ll tell you that an alligator snapping turtle tastes better cause they don’t eat as much dead stuff. But I won’t eat a snappin’ turtle. You know why?”

      Mary shook her head and drank more whiskey.

      “Because a snappin’ turtle can live to be a hundred years old, maybe older. It just don’t seem right to me to eat something that lives so long. Kind of takes em out of the food category for me, you know?”

      “That is a very interesting way of thinking,” Mary said, nodding her head. “Would you show me which of these on my plate is turtle for eating?”

      “That’s a piece right there,” Tommy said, pointing with his fork. “But like I said, you may find it a little strong.”

      Mary picked up the chunk Tommy indicated, dropped it and her fingers in the sauce, and stuck the whole piece in her mouth. She chewed twice, swallowed, licked her fingers, then took a swig of blackjack. She smiled, then reached for another piece.

      “Then again, you might not,” Tommy said.

      I watched the two of them discussing food and drinking whiskey, Tommy enjoying Mary’s appetite and throwing out country witticisms that Mary laughed at even though she didn’t understand half of them.

      Except for less hair and about forty more pounds, Tommy looked about the same as he had when I’d met him twenty years earlier in high school. His fat kept his face smooth and shiny, and his eyes twinkled like blue neon bulbs.

      In school, he’d been one of the few remaining country boys in a community that was changing rapidly from farms to suburbs. Jokes about his height and his accent seemed not to faze him. He was friendly and outgoing and talked to everybody from the principal to the janitors and from the homecoming queen to guys like me who didn’t hardly talk to anybody. He was nicknamed Tiny Tommy, or TT for short, and I never heard him object to it. But he had introduced himself to me as Tommy, so that’s what I called him.

      No one ever knew for sure about the darker side of Tommy, but I saw the first hint of it my sophomore year. He and I were in the same gym class, and a bunch of us were changing clothes when two senior football players grabbed Tommy and threw him into one of the big wire cage lockers. One