Sailor & Lula

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You need a man to go to hell with.

—Tuesday Weld

Lula and her friend Beany Thorn sat at a table in the Raindrop Club drinking rum Co-Colas while watching and listening to a white blues band called The Bleach Boys. The group segued smoothly from Elmore James's “Dust My Broom” into Robert Johnson's “Me and the Devil” and Beany let out a snort.

“I can't stand this singer,” she said.

“He ain't so bad,” said Lula. “Carries a tune.”

“Not that, just he's so ugly. Guys with beards and beer guts ain't quite my type.”

Lula giggled. “Seein's how you're about thick as a used string of unwaxed dental floss, don't know how you can criticize.”

“Yeah, well, if he says all that flab turns into dick at midnight, he's a liar.”

Lula and Beany laughed and swallowed some of their drinks.

“So Sailor's gettin' out soon, I hear,” said Beany. “You gonna see him?”

Lula nodded and crushed an ice cube with her back teeth and chewed it.

“Meetin' him at the gate,” she said.

“I didn't hate men so much,” said Beany, “I'd feel better wishin' you luck.”

“Can't all husbands be perfect,” Lula said. “And Elmo prob'ly wouldn'ta ever got that second one pregnant you hadn't kicked his ass out.”

Beany twisted her blond bangs into a knot on her forehead.

“Shoulda put a thirty-eight long in his groin, what I shoulda done.”

The Bleach Boys kicked into some kind of Professor Longhair swamp mambo and Beany grabbed a waitress.

“Bring us a couple more double-shot rum Co-Colas, 'kay?” she said. “Damn, Lula, look at that bitch wiggle.”

“You mean the waitress?”

“Uh huh. Bet if I had a butt like hers Elmo wouldn'ta stuck his dick in every other keyhole this side of the Tangipahoa.”

“Hard to say for sure,” said Lula.

Beany's eyes watered up. “I guess,” she said. “Only I'd give up plenty—Valiums even, maybe—just to have me some kind of a butt anyway, you know?”

Sailor and Lula lay on the bed in the Cape Fear Hotel listening to the ceiling fan creak. From their window they could see the river as it entered the Atlantic Ocean and watch the fishing boats navigate the narrow channel. It was late June but there was a mild wind that kept them “not uncomfortable,” as Lula liked to say.

Lula's mother, Marietta Pace Fortune, had forbidden her to see Sailor Ripley ever again, but Lula had no intention of following that order. After all, Lula reasoned, Sailor had paid his debt to society, if that's what it was. She couldn't really understand how going to prison for killing someone who had been trying to kill him could be considered payment of a debt to society.