Butterflies in Heat (12 page)

He smiled his thanks.

'Tell me something," she said, "what in hell did you end up here for?"

"I wanted a new chance," he said guardedly, fearing the immediate personal tone the conversation had taken. "What more can any man ask?"

She settled back on the floor with her legs propped up in the air.

He was startled—unpleasantly so—to see she wore no underwear. Turning his head, he tried to answer her question better. "I really don't know why I hitched a ride here. It's as far as my thumb would take me, I guess."

She propped her fleshy body on her elbows. "Tell me something, what are you running from?"

At first, he resented the question. She was prying, and his business was his own. Then he decided her intentions were good. Deliberately stalling, he pulled out a package of cigarettes and lit one. He offered it to her. When she refused, he puffed away on it for a while, then asked: "What makes you think I'm running away? You can run toward something, too."

"You're running away," she insisted. "No doubt about it. I can always tell a mile off. No wonder. Seen enough young men on the lam in my day." She leaned back, using her hands as a pillow.

The cigarette burned his hand before he felt its heat. "Hell," he said, "I've always been running from something. Must have inherited that from myoId man."

"Oh, my God," she yelled, heaving her fleshy body from the floor. "I forgot the dessert." She raced toward the kitchen. "It's burning."

He didn't really hear her, couldn't care about dessert. How unlike his old man who had always insisted it be served at the beginning of a meal "in case I die before I finish eating."

He still remembered the big Nordic ape. Got his blond hair from him. Also, his cock. Every time he got a beating from the old man, he'd look into those eyes—crystal blue and cold as a northern lake in winter.

Even though he'd looked like an ape, he worked in the fields like an ox. He always walked a little stooped forward from having spent his life earning a dollar for some man other than himself.
If
anything, he'd shown Numie how stupid it was to be somebody's slave.

The day he skipped out, he'd taken Numie on a long walk through the fields. The chill of late autumn had been in the air. "I'm gonna make it, son," he'd said. "Real big. The next time you see me, I'll be pulling up in some great big white Cadillac."

After five o'clock dinner, he set out down the road. There had been nothing unusual about that. He never told anybody where he was going or when he was coming back. Once he was gone for eight weeks. But Numie's mama must have known something. Earlier in the day he'd beaten her severely for not having his fresh clothes pressed and laid out. Numie still recalled her standing there on the rotting floor of their front porch long after the old man had disappeared down the road and the sun had set.

"It's store bought" Tangerine said, back in the room now. She handed him a white melted horror.

Tentatively, he tasted it. "I've always had cheesecake cold before."

"I like my cake hot," she said, getting into her piece. "My mama was baking all the time. Did your mama know how to cook?"

"She made what she called creamy gravy, except it had no cream in it and lots of water, and she could make a very floury biscuit—that's about it. Any meat myoId man got."

"What was she like?"

"A dumb hillbilly from the Blue Ridge. After myoId man left us, she went to work in South Carolina in the kitchen of a diner peeling potatoes. When that closed down, she got a job scrubbing shit off other people's toilets."

"Not much of a life."

"In the end, the only thing she had was her religion. She was a real fanatic, praying all the time. Even when she worked, she was muttering some prayer of thanks to God. Thanks for what? Those bony arms she used to lift up to God,
I'll
never forget them. Her sunken eyes, like a dying calf. I saw her grow old before her time; and I swore it wasn't going to happen to me."

"My mama was the same way," Tangerine said, "'cept she wasn't all that skinny. She was constantly being born again, washed in the Blood of the Lamb. She tried to drip some of that blood all over me, but I was an infidel by the time I was three years old," Tangerine said, pouring him another glass of wine. "I started going out with men—I mean men, not boys—when I was eleven years old."

"I was fifteen before I was ever picked up," he said. "Just the year before I'd been at boarding school, and I was pretty innocent even then."

"Care to tell me about it?" she asked. "I just love to hear stories about how guys lose their cherries."

"With me, it started with my standing outside movie houses, wanting to go in. One day this bald old man offered to pay my way. Naturally, once we got inside, I got the hand on the leg. I was too scared to put him off. Or to turn him down when he wanted to go back to his apartment. Know what he wanted? Me to jerk off in front of him—nothing else. Hell, I did that all the time anyway. It became a Saturday afternoon thing, and I always ended up with five dollars."

"Didn't it bother you?" she asked.

"Not with baldy. After all, he wasn't touching me. I think the first time I felt really dirty was when I went to his apartment, and he had two friends there—one a hairy ape, the other a dainty type. They got me drunk. One of them had a camera. I thought it was for a screen test of sorts. When they dumped me near my home later, they gave me a twenty-dollar bill. That was the most money I'd ever seen in my life."

"Your mama, she just let you roam about? Sounds like mine."

She found out I'd been skipping school a lot. She was too frail to beat me up, but she got the big bruiser she worked for to do the job. I needed to hide, so I headed for baldy's apartment. He told me to go away, bolted the damn door."

"True love."

"I walked for miles that night, trying to hitch a ride," he said. "The cars just whizzed by, their bright lights blinding me. Finally, I bedded down in a clump of bushes. Next morning I hit the road again—this time for New York."

"No damn food in your belly."

"Yeah, but not for long. Two college girls picked me up, and they really liked me. Other strangers just talked, saying I was pretty young to be out on my own. Still others wanted me to put out. I didn't turn anybody down. What did I have but my body to trade for meals and a free ride? When I got to New York, I knew for sure how I was going to make my way."

"When I heard about you and Lola that night, I was really thrown a bit. I mean, is black your trip?"

"Anything's my trip. Lola isn't my first black. The first person who picked me up in New York was a black—this one quite a lady. Blacks have always been attracted to me because of my hair. For a while, it was exciting-you know, the big taboo. After a few months I had to get out, though. She told me, 'You're not chicken—more Tom Turkey'. She didn't want any 'old' boys around. I was still fifteen. But in New York when you're fifteen it isn't hard to find another bed."

"You went both routes?"

"Yeah, so I had more than my share of customers. Man or woman, it didn't matter. In fact, I still don't know which I prefer. I've always gone to bed with people I didn't like. I never had sex with anyone because I wanted to—except one time, and I don't even want to think about that tonight. I didn't want to give anything away
if
I could get paid for it. Survival, that's where it was at. That's where it's at now."

"If New York hustling's so great, why did you split?"

"Those beds have been harder to come by in the last few years—and I'm not fooling myself. I've got to go to work one day, get a real job, but all I know how to do is sell my meat."

"I don't believe that," she said. She strode regally over to him and gave him her hand.

He took it and held it. Dazed, he lifted his head. What did she want? Finally deciding it was only an offer of bodily comfort, he squeezed
it
and let
it
drop. He sank back on the sofa, as a silence fell over the room. "I almost never talk about myself. But I've been doing a lot of rapping on this island."

"It's hard to keep a secret in Tortuga."

He downed the last of the wine.

Out on the street again, he wondered
if
he felt self-pity or self-contempt. A vague emptiness was welling inside him. Somehow he'd missed out. But missed out on what? Why was he getting sentimental about himself? Maybe because of the spirit of that glorious old hag who would love anything that came in front of her path.

He couldn't get his head together. Not one single, clear idea. He was all broken inside, his eyes hazed with booze.

All around him decaying gingerbread verandas spoke of a long-faded elegance, a Southern aristocracy dimly remembered. Now laundry hung over the railings, and children slept out on uncovered mattresses on rotting boards. Once ladies in antebellum gowns and white stockings waited under white parasols for gentlemen callers on a Sunday afternoon.

Now, today, these same veranda occupants would have settled for a decent meal.

Didn't life ever get better?

The volley of water was cold, but bracing. Numie scrubbed too hard, trying to wash away the memories of a drunken night.

Stepping out, he blindly reached for a towel.

Lola was there, holding one from her perch on the toilet stool. She kneeled on the tile and began to dry his legs vigorously.

"You really dig me, don't you?" he asked. "Now get in the kitchen and fix my breakfast."

"Get him!" Lola said, tossing the wet towel in his face. "You really think it's a man's world!"

"Freedom's something you wouldn't know anything about"

"What? You want to bring back slavery?"

"No, I just know when a woman wants a man to boss her around. Now, get my breakfast"

Stepping into his jeans, he went into the living room. There he collapsed on the white satin sofa. The smell of bacon frying wafted across.

Bacon frying reminded him of Louise of long ago. She would cook his breakfast in the morning. With his mama working in the diner, he saw more of Louise than anybody.

Where was she today? Probably on welfare in some shack in Carolina. Maybe dead. She wasn't any too young when he knew her, and that was twenty years ago.

But she laughed a lot and didn't give a damn about religion—so she was fun to be with. A gelatinous mass of a woman, black as Lola, she was short, but she always wore high heels, even when cooking breakfast. "Flat shoes are for field niggers," she used to say.

She'd walk across those wooden floors with a mincing gait, her large hips keeping a rhythm all their own. Those high heels were too small for Louise. Maybe that's why she used to say, "I never stand up when I can plop this big fat ass of mine down."

Louise spent a lot of time on her back, not always alone. During the day, she'd been Numie's mama. But at night she had no need for him. Too busy mothering men far too big to need a mama.

Those men would arrive with boxes and candy in heart-shaped Valentine boxes. Louise had the largest collection of those boxes of just about anybody. Sometimes the more considerate men would bring a bar of candy for Numie, too. Often he'd be given a comic book which the men had read themselves.

Louise would receive them in faded white lace dresses turned yellow with her sweat. She was forever lying there against the flowered wallpaper of her living room which had been stained by leaking rain.

She figured Numie was too young to care what was happening. She didn't even bother to shoo him out of the room. Each evening, the same ritual. After Louise and her main man of the night got drunk, the suitor would take down his pants—rarely take off his shirt—and mount her.

Numie was allowed to watch, or else he could go into the kitchen for some cold fried chicken Louise kept in the refrigerator. After they were through, Louise and her man would laugh a lot. Often they'd sing.

One night had been different. Her lover that time had been younger than the rest, his mustache making his broad features sinister. He smelled of shaving lotion. His skin was much lighter than Louise's, almost olive in tone. He hadn't bothered to bring Valentine candy boxes or anything for Numie.

He also hadn't bothered with the preliminary drinking. He just put a shiny ten-dollar bill right down on the table, pulled off all his clothes, even his shirt, and ordered Numie into the kitchen.

That afternoon Louise had made some fudge, and Numie decided to sample that. Later he heard Louise screaming, "It hurts ...it's killing me." Grabbing a paring knife, Numie had rushed to the front bedroom. In one quick move, he jabbed the knife into the shoulder blade of Louise's rider.

Numie recalled nothing after that—nothing except a kick in the face that sent him sprawling across the room.

When he came to, Louise's watermelons were swinging back and forth over him. "I do believe you've been bit green by the jealous bug." She was laughing and smiling, giving him a loud, slurpy kiss on the mouth. She showed no clue whatsoever she'd been involved in an act of violence only hours before.