“You was,” Rufus said, “and she wouldn’t have nothin’ to do with you, you can be damned sure—”

“Rufus, you get on!” Mona said.

Red and Rufus chuckled again.

Mona laughed out over it.

“I don’t,” Harry repeated with a shake of his bristly chin, “want to be no nigger. I just wanna learn how to play me a little nigger music on the harp. Then we wouldn’t have to run the goddamn radio all the goddamn time. And listen to shit like that Harkner stuff!”

“Rufus?” Red dropped his forearm; Rufus looked over. “Didn’t you pull a harmonica out of the scrapin’s about two months ago? You had it on the windowsill for a while, but I think it fell down behind the bedstead in the cabin. I betcha it’s still there. You don’t use it, nigger. Whyn’t you let Harry have it?”

Rufus shrugged. “Sure. If he want it. The lowest note is a little squeaky, but the rest play fine, a-puffin’ and a-suckin’.”

Which made Mona giggle and cracked Harry up.

“You pull it out of the garbage?” Harry asked, rubbing his belly from laughing. “Out of the garbage, man? Hell, I’ll probably come down with cancer or pee-neumonia!”

“It play fine,” Rufus said, “’cept the lowest note.”

Andy’s music threaded the docks, blowing sad and silvery on the warm night.

We all listened.

“I’ll come over and take a look at your mouth harp tomorrow morning,” Harry said at last. “Then I’ll go down and talk to Andy.”

“Sure,” Rufus said. “I betcha Andy’d like teachin’ somebody. Most of the guys around here think Andy’s a little funny in the head and don’t spend too much time with him. But Andy’s a good ol’ boy. He might like that just a whole lot.”

The music drew down, low and growly, then reared up, all high and pained and drawn out sharp against the moon and clouds.

I started walking again, up the dock.

Passing Red and Rufus’s scow, I looked at the dark shack on the back. Garbage was piled all the way up one side to the roof; and there wasn’t hardly a clear space on the deck at all. Once I got on the other side, the smell did get strong.

What was still going through my mind was Hogg; and all those speeches he used to make that sounded like he’d said them to other people before. Thinking about the people I’d just been overhearing, I wondered how much of what they said were things they repeated and repeated among the four of them, night after night, months running; and how much was new. It was pretty easy to figure, actually. Which made me think about Hogg again.

I missed him.

The harmonica drifted down and along.

A few boat decks on, another nigger fisherman and a policeman were talking low and drinking from a flat bottle one passed to the other, then back. The policeman was the one with the kinky blond hair I’d seen through the tug window.