PLAN A
“You're goin' where?”
“New Orleans, Mama, to visit Beany. You remember, Beany Thorn? She wrote invitin' me and Pace, soon as school's out.”
“How could I ever forget that wild-ass child? She give away two, or was it three fatherless babies before she was seventeen?”
“One, Mama, and the boy woulda married her only Beany wouldn't. He was gonna be a dogcatcher like his daddy. Other two she had done away with early.”
“Cracked up Lord knows how many automobiles, too. And it was her lawyer daddy, Tapping Reeve Thorn, bribed a federal judge and got caught and both he and the judge did three years at some country club in Alabama. Then her mother, Darlette, drank herself brainless and had to be shipped out to a zombie camp up in the Smoky Mountains. After servin' his time, Tap threw himself away on a topless dancer in Charlotte and bought her a condominium. Last I heard he was racin' stock cars at the speedway and there was talk of him bein' indicted again for some junk bond scam. Them Thorns ain't exactly simple to forget, Lula. What's the trashy daughter up to in New Orleans? Hookin'?”
“She's married now, to a good man named Bob Lee Boyle, owns a alligator repellent manufacturin' company. They got a son, Lance, who's six years old; and a new baby girl, Madonna Kim. They live in a fabulous big house in Metairie, over in Jefferson Parish, and Beany says there's plenty of room for Pace and me to stay as long as we want. Plan A is to give my notice at the 7-Eleven.”
“Well, that's somethin'.”
“Mama, be honest. You got more than a little to be thankful for.”
“I'm late for the Daughters, Lula. Let's talk later.”
“I'm sure the memory of the Confederacy'd live on without you, Mama, but okay.”
“Bye, precious. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
PLAN B
“Most gators go for gars. Not often one tackles somethin' much larger, like a human.”
“Bob Lee knows more about alligators than anyone, almost,” said Beany. “Least more about 'em than anyone I ever knew, not that I ever knew anybody before
cared
.”
Lula, Beany, and Bob Lee were sitting at the dining room table in the Boyle house in Metairie. Lula and Pace had flown in late in the afternoon, and they had just finished dinner. Pace and Lance were upstairs in Lance's room watching TV, and Madonna Kim, the baby, was asleep.
“It sounds fascinatin', Bob Lee,” Lula said, fiddling with the spoon next to her coffee cup. “How'd you get started on gators?”
“Grew up around 'em in Chacahoula, where my daddy's folks're from. I spent considerable time there as a boy. We lived in Raceland, and my mama's people come from Crozier and Bayou Cane, near Houma. Later I worked for Wildlife Management at Barataria. Started workin' on my own mix after a biology professor from Texas A&M came by askin' questions. Told me a man could make a fortune if he figured out how to keep crocs from devourin' folks live on the Nile River in Africa, for instance, and in India and Malaysia. Crocs and gators react about the same to stimuli. Secret to it's in their secretions, called pheromones. They got glands near the tail, emit scents for matin' purposes. Other ones around their throat mark territory. Beasts use the sense of smell to communicate.”
“Lula and I've known a few pussy-sniffin' beasts ourselves,” said Beany, making them all laugh.
“If that's true, Lula,” said Bob Lee, “then you know what I'm talkin' about. Same thing goes for these reptiles.”
“What do y'all call your product?”
“ âGator Gone.' Got it trademarked for worldwide distribution now. Warehouse is in Algiers and the office is on Gentilly, near the Fair Grounds. Come around some time. Right now, though, I gotta go make some phone calls, you ladies don't mind.”
“We got lots to talk about,” Beany said. “You go on.”
Bob Lee got up and went out of the room.
“He's a swell man, Beany. You're fortunate to have him.”
“Only man I ever met didn't mind my bony ass!”
They laughed.
“And he don't beg me to give him head all the time, neither. Not that I ever cared particularly one way or the other about it, but it's a change. Only thing is the name, Beany Boyle. Sounds like a hobo stew.”
“You look like you-all're doin' just fine.”
“Pace sure is a sharpie. Image of his daddy.”
“Ain't he? Breaks my heart, too.”
“You and Sailor ain't in touch, I take it.”
Lula shook her short black hair like a nervous filly in the starting gate.
“Haven't heard from him since he got out of prison over six months ago. We met that one time for about fifteen minutes at the Trailways, and then he just walked off in the night. Guess it was too much to expect we could work anything out. And I think seein' Pace scared Sailor, made those ten years I never went to visit him jump up in his face. I don't know, Beany, it's hard to figure out how I feel for real. And Mama don't make thinkin' for myself any easier.”
“Marietta's a vicious cunt, Lula, face it. She ain't got a life and she's afraid you'll get one. That's why she freaked when you and Sailor run off. I'm surprised she let you come here, knowin' how she hates me.”
“She don't hate you, Beany, and she ain't really vicious. Also I'm twenty-nine and a half years old now. She can't exactly tell me what I can or can't do.”
“Don't stop her from manipulatin' you every chance. So what's the plan?”
“Thought maybe you could work on one with me. I need help and I know it.”
Beany reached across the table and held Lula's hand.
“I'm with you, Lula, same as always. We'll figure out somethin'.”
The baby began to cry. Beany smiled, squeezed Lula's hand and stood up.
“There's my Madonna Kim,” she said. “Another complainin' female. Let's go get her in on this.”
POPPY AND PERDITA
Carmine “Poppy” Papavero put his lime green seer-sucker-jacketed right arm around Juju Taylor's D.J. Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince tee-shirted shoulders and smiled.
“You know, Juju, you keep doin' good like this, I'm gonna have to say somethin' nice about you to Mr. Santos.”
“It definitely be a pleasure workin' for you, Mr. Papavero. Tell Mr. Santos can't nobody cover like Juju's Jungle Lovers. We handle however much shit you want. Got Lovers be in Alabama, too, you want to spread it out.”
“I'll keep it in mind. Meanwhile, you take care of Mississippi north of the Gulf and we'll see how it goes. What's this I hear about an L.A. gang moving in?”
“They show up here we be all over 'em like smoke on links.”
Poppy patted Juju on the back, then squeezed his thick neck.
“Be seeing you soon, Juju.”
Poppy walked out of the gang's safehouse and saw Perdita Durango leaning against the blue Beamer. He went over and kissed her forehead, which was on a level with his chin. Poppy went six-three and a hard two-forty. Perdita had never had a steady his size before. Poppy punished her during their lovemaking but never to the point where it became painful. She'd learned to enjoy the weight.
Perdita had met Poppy at Johnny Black's Black & Blue Club in Gulfport, where she'd gone with an acquaintance named Dio Bolivar, a local liquor salesman and small-time hoodlum with a pencil-thin mustache and flashy clothes. Poppy had come over to their table and asked what a beautiful lady like her was doing in a low-rent joint with an unsuccessful pimp. Dio heard this and jumped up like a jack-in-the-box, ready to duke until he saw who'd said it.
“Oh, good evenin', Mr. Papavero,” Bolivar said, having recognized Crazy Eyes Santos's chief enforcer on the Gulf Coast. Poppy led her away, and that was the last Perdita ever saw of Dio Bolivar.
She had told Poppy about her childhood in Corpus Christi; how her
sister, Juana, had been murdered by her husband, Tony, who had also murdered both of his and Juana's daughters before shooting himself, but not much else. She didn't want him to know about the jams she'd been in in Texas and Mexico and California. It was a good idea, Perdita thought, to start fresh, keep her mouth shut and let this big man pay the bills. He didn't seem to mind so long as she kept herself pretty and available. It wasn't hard work and Papavero wasn't nearly as moody as most of the other guys she'd known. Besides, Perdita felt grown up with Poppy, respectable, like a regular woman rather than a piece of Tex-Mex trash. She decided that this was a gig worth holding on to.
“These Jungle guys are turning out better than I thought,” Poppy said to Perdita as he drove them away. “They force people to buy shit even if they're not users, just to stay healthy. Not even Santos thought of that!”
Perdita sat in the passenger seat with her body turned toward Poppy, making sure that her tight black skirt rode halfway up her thighs. Poppy looked over at her and stroked her legs with his hairy right hand.
“You really do please me, Perdita,” he said. “I never told you, but I was married once. It didn't last too long, about five years. It ended, let's see now, when I was thirty, fifteen years ago. Her name was Dolores, but everybody called her Dolly. She worked in the Maison Blanche on Canal Street when I met her, in the women's apparel department. I went there to buy a birthday present for another girl. I saw Dolly and forgot all about the girl. She had big tits, a big nose and a flat ass. There was something about her, though, that got me, aside from her tits. Dolly had a way of looking at you that made you think she knew all about you, who you really were deep inside. It sounds dumb, I know, but if you'd met her you'd understand.”
“It don't sound dumb. I've known people like that. One guy, especially, who was a kind of strange, religious person. He's dead now.”
“Yeah? You have? Well, Dolly's the only one I've ever known had that look, like she knew every rotten or good thing you'd ever done in your entire life. It was spooky.”
“So what happened to her and you?”
“I married her, like I said. It was going along good enough, I guess, but she didn't like not knowing what I did every day, where I went, and that sometimes I was out until five or six in the morning or took off without telling her for a few days.”
Poppy shook his head, remembering.
“No, she didn't like what I was doing. Dolly knew I was moving up in the organization, bringing home more money, which was okay because I'd made her quit her job at the Maison Blanche. But then she wanted a child and no matter what we did, she couldn't get pregnant. We went to a couple of doctors and they both said it was because of some defect she had in her system, and there was no way to correct it. They suggested we adopt, which Dolly didn't want to do. I wouldn't have minded. There's plenty of orphans need homes and that way she could have a kid, but for some reason she didn't want one unless it was her own. Her parents and grandparents were all dead, she didn't have any family but me.”
“What color hair did she have?” asked Perdita, lighting up a Marlboro.
“Kind of reddish-blond. Her mother was Polish, she told me, and her father was Czech. She kept pictures of them on the bedroom dresser. I came home one night late, about four A.M., from the Egyptian Sho-Bar on Napoleon Avenue that I was running then, and Dolly wasn't there. At first I thought maybe she'd gone down to the all-night pharmacy on Esplanade for something, but when she wasn't back by five I knew that wasn't it. I looked at the dresser, and the pictures of her parents were gone. Dolly walked out on me. No note, no phone call, nothing. I was upset at first, of course, but after a week I didn't care. I just hoped she was happier wherever she was, and I went on with my life.”
Perdita didn't say anything as Poppy sped them south on 59 toward New Orleans. They passed a Greyhound and Perdita thought how much better it was to be traveling in a new BMW than on a bus. She lowered the tinted window a crack and tossed out her cigarette butt. Sailor Ripley saw the blue car zoom by and a cigarette fly out and bounce off the side of the bus just below where he was sitting.
“What do you think, Perdita?” asked Poppy. “Is that a sad story or not?”
“Heard lots sadder,” she said.
Poppy Papavero laughed and grabbed her left thigh.
“So have I, pussycat. So have I.”
SOUTHERN BELL
“She left when?”
“Yesterday. I tell you, Dal, this is just another way for Lula to avoid facin' the future, if she's ever gonna have one's worth a thing.”
“Marietta, it don't matter how much or how little you fuss. Lula's gonna find herself or not and you can't do nothin' about it.”
“Okay, Dal, I believe you, but that still don't make me feel any better. And why is it in the back of my mind I got this sneakin' notion Sailor Ripley ain't out of the picture?”
“He is the boy's father, after all. And it's plain Lula ain't yet resolved her feelin's about him.”
“But, Dal, it's been more'n ten years she's had to figure it out.”
“That ain't nothin' where love's concerned, Marietta, you know that. And Lula feels guilty as get-out over not havin' gone to see Sailor all that time he was shut away from society. You didn't have no little to do with that, either.”
“Dal, I swear on my grandmama Eudora Pace's grave I never told Lula not to visit Sailor. She was just busy bringin' up her son by herself and couldn't never get away.”
“This ain't worth our arguin' now, is it? You and I know well enough how much influence you keep over that girl.”