PARTISAN REVIEW
facing the door there was a large advertisement for ice cream, show–
ing a cow dressed like a housewife.
"It
ain't here," Enoch said. "We have to stop here on the way
and get something to eat. What you want?"
"Nothing," Haze muttered. He stood stiffly
in
the middle of the
room with his hands in his pockets and his neck drawn down inside
his collar.
"Well, sit down," Enoch said. "I have to have a little drink."
Something stirred behind the counter and a woman with bobbed
hair like a man's got up from a chair where she had been reading
the newspaper, and came forward. She looked sourly at Enoch.
She had on a once-white uniform clotted with brown stains. "What
you want?" she said in a loud voice, leaning close to his ear as if
he were deaf. She had a man's face and big muscled arms.
"I want a chocolate malted milkshake, baby girl," Enoch said
softly. "I want a lot of ice cream in it."
She turned fiercely from him and glared at Haze.
"He says he don't want nothing but to sit down and look at you
for a while," Enoch said. "He ain't hungry but for just to see you."
Haze looked woodenly at the woman and she turned her back
on
him
and began mixing the milkshake. He sat down on the last
stool in the row and started cracking his knuckles.
Enoch watched him carefully. "I reckon you done changed
some," he murmured after a few minutes.
Haze's neck jerked around and he started forward. "Give me
those people's address. Right now," he said.
It came to Enoch in an instant. The police. His face was sud–
denly suffused with secret knowledge. "I reckon you ain't as uppity
as you used to be," he said. "I reckon maybe," he said, "you ain't
got so much cause now as you had then." Stole theter automobile,
he thought.
Hazel Weaver sat back down. There was no expression on
his
face but inside
his
sour wet eyes, something moved. He turned away
from Enoch.
"How come you jumped up so fast down yonder at the pool?"
Enoch asked. The woman turned around to him with the malted
milk in her hand. "Of course," he said evilly, "I wouldn't have had
no truck with a ugly dish like that neither."
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