Love by Toni Morrison Read Free Book Online

besides he had heard that Cosey’s boat was smart.
    “You don’t need to bring anything. I have it all.”
    You can say that again, thought Sandler.
    They met at the pier at
4
a.m
.
and pushed off immediately, in silence. No weather chat or wagers about the haul. Cosey seemed less hearty than the evening before. Sandler put the change down to the seriousness of handling the little cruiser, tacking into the ocean, then landward to a cove Sandler knew nothing about. Or else it was the oddity of their being alone together. Cosey didn’t mix with local people publicly, which is to say he employed them, joked with them, even rescued them from difficult situations, but other than at church picnics, none was truly welcome at the hotel’s tables or on its dance floor. Back in the forties, price kept most neighborhood people away, but even when a family collected enough money to celebrate a wedding there, they were refused. Pleasantly. Regretfully. Definitely. The hotel was booked. There was some spotty rancor over the undisguised rejection, but in those days most didn’t mind, thought it reasonable. They had neither the clothes nor the funds, and did not wish to be embarrassed by those who did. When Sandler was a boy, it was enough to watch the visitors, admire their cars and the quality of their luggage; to listen to the distant music and dance to it in the dark, the deep dark, between their own houses, in shadow underneath their own windowsills. It was enough to know Bill Cosey’s Hotel and Resort was there. Otherwise, how to explain the comfort available nowhere else in the county, or the state, for that matter. Cannery workers and fishing families prized it. So did housemaids traveling to Silk, laundresses, fruit pickers, as well as teachers in broken-down schools; even visiting ministers, who did not hold with liquor-fueled gatherings or dance music—all felt a tick of entitlement, of longing turned to belonging in the vicinity of the fabulous, successful resort controlled by one of their own. A fairy tale that lived on even after the hotel was dependent for its life on the people it once excluded.
    “Bonita come back in here,” said Cosey. “Way station for them, I guess.” He brightened and pulled out a thermos of coffee that, Sandler discovered, was so laced the coffee was more color than flavor. It did the trick. They were soon deep in the merits of Cassius Clay, which quelled an argument about Medgar Evers.
    The catch was poor, the banter jovial, until sunrise, when the alcohol leveled and the talk turned gloomy. Cosey, looking at some lively worms in the belly of a catfish, said, “If you kill the predators, the weak will eat you alive.”
    “Everything has its place, Mr. Cosey,” Sandler replied.
    “True. Everything. Except women. They’re all over the damn place.”
    Sandler laughed.
    “In the bed,” continued Cosey, “the kitchen, the yard, at your table, under your feet, on your back.”
    “That can’t be all bad,” offered Sandler.
    “No. No. It’s great. Great.”
    “Then why ain’t you smiling?”
    Bill Cosey turned to look at Sandler. His eyes, though bright from drink, radiated pain like cracked glass. “What do they say about me?” he asked, sipping from the thermos.
    “They?”
    “You all. You know. Behind my back.”
    “You a highly respected man, Mr. Cosey.”
    Cosey sighed as though the answer disappointed him. “Damned if I do, damned if I don’t,” he said. Then, in the sudden shift of subject that children and heavy drinkers enjoy, “My son, Billy, was about your age. When he died, I mean.”
    “Is that right?”
    “We had some good times. Good times. More like pals than father and son. When I lost him . . . it was like somebody from the grave reached up and grabbed him for spite.”
    “Somebody?”
    “I mean something.”
    “How’d he die?”
    “Damnedest thing. Walking pneumonia they call it. No symptoms. A cough or two and the lights go out.” He scowled into