He shifts his eyes to Zenobia, cruelly spotlighted in a kleig of street lamp. He compares her jowly face with Marguerite's taut facial planes, Marguerite's pearly dazzle of teeth with Zenobia's snuff-browned teeth rotted and jagged in her agape mouth oozing snuff spittle at its corners.
He scans, compares the cables of varicose veins on Zenobia's tree trunk limbs with the smooth sleek legs and thighs of Marguerite, Zenobia's pendulous breast globs with the girlish jut of Marguerite's confection peaks. He stares, compares Zenobia's ballooned belly deformed by soul food suet with the sexy concavity of Marguerite's fashion model waist.
He sighs, shakes his head. How could it happen? Where did Zenobia's cute face and pulse lashing figure go, the years, his own youth? He shudders and is panged by pity for himself, for her. He goes across the carpet, pauses to stare at her shambled face. He feels only sterile affection for his faithful, cantankerous, broken old doll as he goes past her to the kitchen to brew a cup of coffee.
In the feeble glow of the kitchen night light he gazes at his lean six-three frame magnified into a gigantic ceiling high shadow on the wall above the gas stove. He thinks that only in Marguerite's presence does he feel himself so heroically magnified. His ancient Zulu Maiden, Dutch Slaver roots are revealed dramatically in the blue flare of flame beneath the coffee pot that flickers his square cast, sensual lipped Afro visage. Red highlights glint his near silky hair.
He stares at the gas flame, remembers long ago festive flame: Succulent odors from a sharecropper's barbecue in celebration of the end of World War One waft into a boxcar. He sees himself leap off a freight train into heavy brush outside Macon, Georgia. He sees himself, a half-starved bedraggled murder fugitive from the chain gang, sneak into a sharecropper cabin on a knoll overlooking a frenetic scene.
Sweat shiny celebrants, in Sunday best overalls and calico, dance and sing to the music of tambourines and banjos around browning carcasses of pigs spitted above crackling flames that grenade sparks into the clamorous night air. A sea of the plantation's cotton in blossom sparkles like ermine beneath a ceiling of crystal stars.
He thinks of how he exchanged his striped convict pants for field grimy overalls found beneath the bed in the cabin.
He remembers his wild anxiety crouching in the shadows waiting for the cabin occupants, rehearsing what he'd say to win support and compassion. At midnight, he presses himself deeper into the cabin murk. He remembers his high grade erection watching the approach of an outrageously voluptuous and beautiful barefoot girl of thirteen agleam like seal skin in the moonlight, moving up a forested path to the cabin.
She lights a kerosene lamp and discovers his presence. He stifles her startled scream with his palm, blurts out his fugitive tale. She weeps to hear it, shares remnants from the barbecue feast with him. She tells him her name is Zenobia. Her child's face is unforgettably sad as she tearfully confides that she is an orphan married to a cheating, brutal husband three times her age. He has gone off to the cabin of his octoroon girlfriend on a nearby plantation, she tells him as she shows a snapshot of the grossly ugly fornicator.
She gives him an army blanket, buttermilk, a bag of cracklins and cornbread. She leads him to a hiding place in a stand of magnolia trees. He remembers Zenobia, hesitant to leave, gazing into his eyes. Then sudden erotic chemistry melds them, humps them furiously together on a bed of wild daisies. He remembers he didn't see her again until ten years later in 1928 after several stints on plantations and dozens of clandestine redneck sponsored prize fights for miserly fees in Georgia and Mississippi.
Rediscovered, she is despondent, pregnant and freshly abandoned by Cecil Brown, her second cousin common-law husband. He sees her drinking herself into a stupor in a blind pig moonshine joint in the hills outside Vicksburg. Sees himself rescuing her from mass rape by a hovering, hooched up gang of cotton slaves. He remembers his heart cavorted at the sight of her again, the lovely vision she was in Salvation Army peach lace when they married six months later in a country church. He remembers that a year after Joe Allen Junior was born the family made it by Greyhound to the promised land, Los Angeles.
And now the sound of Zenobia muttering in her sleep dissolves Joe's reverie. He pours a huge mug of coffee, heavily laced with scotch, and goes back to his chair at the window. Shortly, he rises to soundlessly open the door for Joe Junior. They go up the stairway to Junior's room.
'Damn, Lil Joe, you had me worried ... better put on your pajamas before Zen wakes up' Senior Joe says as he sits on the side of the bed, sipping from the coffee mug.
Young Joe quickly shucks out of his street clothes and is putting on pajamas when his father says, with a knowing gleam in his eye, 'You sonuvagun! Those bite marks and scratches on your back tell me you've had a ball with a hot butt chippie.'
Young Joe frowns as he sits beside his stepfather. 'Pops, you got it wrong ... I had a ball with a pretty, high-class business lady from Chicago. She's got Reba skunked on the figure side,' he says as he air sculpts Delphine's curves with his palms.
'That's great Son! I'm glad you finally realize that Reba isn't the only pretty girl in the world. I always hated to see you busting your heart strings over Reba since you were twelve with never a Chinaman's chance to be anything to her except a play brother.'
Young Joe exclaims, 'Oh, me and Delphine got a groovy thing going from the git go. She told me I'm the most striking looking stud she's ever met and the best in bed. She's lonely, cried and told me she needs me. Pops, she sho 'nuff makes me feel goooood!'
Senior Joe's eyes narrow suspiciously, 'You just saw ... uh, met Delphine tonight for the first time?'
'Yeah, so what Pops? You and Mama had to meet the first time.'
'You sound like you falling in love too soon Lil Joe. She might blow cold and dump you like they sometimes do. She could mess up your fighter's head son, if you start dreaming a dream that can't come true like with Reba.'
'She's for real. She wants to be my fox. She ain't in love with another stud like Reba.'
'What kinda business lady is she?'
'Had a beauty shop in Chi, gonna open one in L.A. She's got boo-koos of dough her father left her tied up in court.'
'She older than you?'
'Near my age, maybe a year or two older.'
'Ah! That's bad. She could be a fooling thirty, hardened and laid a zillion times. They come pretty but rotten like that son, high jiving and looking like angels fresh from heaven.'
'She ain't jiving! Why you signifying 'bout her so tough Pops?'
Elder Joe up-ends the mug of scotch laced coffee, says 'I'm worried that the lady is too fast for you, which is bad news for a young fighter who is prepping his body and head to be heavyweight champion of the world.'
He drapes his arm around Junior Joe's shoulders, slurs with visceral passion, 'Don't get trapped now in your young life like I was and blow the chance to live like a king with a world full of luxuries and fabulous broads panting to lay poontang on you after you become champ. Don't wind up like me in the funky ghetto reaming shit for the white boss for chicken feed and trapped in hell with a Jesus crazy old ...'
The hurt, shocked expression on his stepson's face as he jerks from his embracing arm abruptly sobers him, checks his scotch loosened tongue. Sweat bubbles his forehead as he creaks to his feet, says shakily, 'I'm sorry Lil Joe ... that wasn't my heart speaking about Zen ... just my scotch.'
Young Joe stares up at him shaking his head incredulously as tears flood his eyes. He whispers in a ragged monotone 'Pops, I can't dig you, cracking you in Hell and bad mouthing Mama after all the years she's been in your corner, slaving to make it with you. Pops, you don't love Mama, don't wanta be with us?'
'Son, you know I love and cherish you and Zen,' elder Joe whispers with anguished downcast eyes.
'Pops, me and you been tight like you my real pa. But we gonna fall out if you ever call Mama bad names again.'
Elder Joe says, 'Son, it won't happen again. I promise. Can you forgive me?' He extends his hand.
Young Joe stares at it, says, 'I don't know right now Pops.'
Elder Joe turns and leaves the room with leaden feet. Junior follows him into his bedroom, embraces him, says 'Pops, I forgive you. You still my main man.'
As they disengage, elder Joe says 'And you mine, Son.'
Young Joe says, 'I'm not going to bed and leave Mama down there sleeping in her clothes.'
Elder Joe says, 'I'll go down and wake her up,' as he picks up his pearl grey suit coat to put on a hanger.
Young Joe snatches the coat and stares at the crimson smudge of Marguerite's lipstick on a lapel. 'Oh Pops!' he exclaims with a contorted face.
He flings the coat to the carpet, stomps on it, says harshly 'Nigger, you done gone crazy?! You know Mama's got high blood pressure. Heavy stuff like that lipstick could give Mama a stroke. Nigger, don't waste my mama!'
They freeze at the sound of Zenobia's ponderous feet on the stairway.
Elder Joe stage whispers, 'Panther Cox's girlfriend branded my coat dancing with me. I ain't never played around on Zen. I swear, Son!'
Young Joe dashes across the hall into his bedroom and eases the door shut. He gets into bed and cuts off the nightstand light. His need to believe in his stepfather forces him through a wall of doubt to accept the lipstick fable as truth.
He listens to his parents' conversation: 'Midnight Creeper, is my chile home in one piece from the prize ring?'
'Yeah Zen, except for a light scratch on his nose that don't matter a hill of beans.'
'I didn't nap until after midnight. I done told you and told you I don't want my chile in them streets prowling late at night.'
'We were off the streets, inside playing whist at Panther's with a few fighters and handlers ... Junior's been asleep a long time.'
Junior Joe hears his mother grunt dubiously, go to her bedroom for a moment, then go into the bathroom. He drifts into sleep listening to her draw a tub of bath water.
Later, refreshed by her long nap and bath, Zenobia makes up her face. She leaves the bathroom with her bulk swathed in a tent-like white satin bathrobe. She opens elder Joe's bedroom door as Joe is coming out. He pecks her forehead.
She follows him to the kitchen, stands beside him as he brews coffee, croons 'Big Joe, I brought you some of that catered choclit moosie from the white folks' party you crazy 'bout.'
'Thank you Zen. I'll eat it tomorrow' he murmurs as he stares at the coffee pot.
Her demolished doll face, thickly made up, is gargoylish in the murk of night light. She gazes cow-eyed at his dimpled cheeked profile, almost boyish in the sorceress soft light. Rare passion pings and fires her cold loins for the first time in almost three months.
'Big Joe, I been on a two week diet and dropped almost six pounds. I ain't gonna stop losing 'til I get myself down to that tantalizing size you like when we opened the cafe. Remember how the customers flirted with me and made you salty?' she says as she massages her epic blubber against his buttocks.
'Yeah Zen, I remember. You were something else Old Girl ... you can lose it Dear Heart' he says as he pecks her forehead. He flees with the mug of coffee to the nearly empty fifth of scotch in a cupboard.
Rejected, she balefully watches him scotch-spike the coffee, says peevishly, 'Guess I'll go to bed so I'll be feeling pert for church ... hope you gonna go with me so I can prove I still got a husband.'
With fake reluctance creasing his face he says, 'Wish I could Zen, but I got a lagging factory boiler to connect for Monday operation ... maybe next Sunday baby.'
She waddles across the kitchen, evil-eyed, to face him, ropey veined hands on her hips. 'You been saying next Sunday for six months. Do that boiler after church. I ain't taking it no more. Joe Allen, you going to take me to church this morning. I'm not going alone!' she commands as she stomps toward the kitchen doorway.
'I don't want to go. I'm not going Zen. Whatsa matter? Your main man, Sweet Dick Jesus, too busy to take you?' His calm, steely voice and taunt halt her, bringing her back.
She tiptoes, eyeball to eyeball. 'You blaspheming snake! You 'shamed of me, ain't you?! Bet you ain't 'shamed of that conning gutter skunk you hooked up with that's got you primping and thinking you young and cute.'
She wiggles her nose, almost touching his face as she sniffs his mouth and his mustache. He recoils.
She exclaims, 'Aha! I smell her pussy stink on your mustache!'
He shapes a controlled little smile, laughs hollowly, 'Zen, what you must smell is the catfish I had at Panther's place. And I'm not gonna apologize for being fairly well preserved and keeping myself up. Don't blame me 'cause your hair turned white and you let yourself get fat and old ... 'sides, I'm gonna love you anyhow 'til the last breath I draw' he placates as he sees her eyes cloud with rage and her fists knot and quiver at her sides.
'You lyin'! I been knowing you foolin' 'round. And I ain't old yet. I ain't but forty-two. Shoot! You sixty. You old 'nuff to be my papa. You old grey butt, pussy eatin' Devil.' She savagely waggles an index finger beneath his nose. 'Don't you never let your mouth call me old again. I look old 'cause I gotta slave for the white folks, 'cause you wrecked the Down Home Cafe bettin' race horses and good timin'.'
'Zen, I swear on Mama's sainted soul, you smelled catfish. Zen, you hurt me when you get carried away by your imagination ... I want to make it with you but you make it so hard' he says as he moves with a sadly solemn face and his laced mug of coffee toward the doorway.
She scrambles to block his way. She seizes the lapels of his robe, and stares up into his shifting eyes. 'Awright, 'fess up and promise me you ain't gonna midnight creep no more and you ain't gonna see her no more and I'll forgive you ... ain't no reason we can't make it swell together like we usta. C'mon now, Sweet Patootie, 'fess up and promise!'
He musters the guile to focus his wayward eyes on hers with unblinking, wounded innocence, 'Zen, there's nothing to confess. You can't forgive an innocent man. You can't get yourself together Zen ... how can we make it?'