“I got to. Look at the fix Lula got herself in the last time she ran off. Mixed up with a bunch of deranged criminals in a West Texas desert, people gettin' shot and killed all around, and her pregnant besides. If Johnnie and I hadn't tracked Lula down in that Big Tuna hellhole who knows where she'd be today? Prob'ly'd have two or three more illegitimate children and be lost out in some godforsaken place like California, surrounded by a hundred kinds of drug-crazed devil worshipers.”
“Marietta, how you can carry on. Lula's just in New Orleans visitin' an old friend. It'll be good for her, gettin' away for a bit. By the way, you heard any more from Santos?”
“Two dozen red roses arrived this mornin', with a card.”
“I'll be. What'd it say?”
“Oh, somethin' like, âTo Marietta, who always deserves the best, from Marcello.' ”
“Natalie Suarez knows someone in N.O. knows Mona Costatroppo, the woman your playmate Crazy Eyes been keepin' down there the last few years.”
“So?”
“Natalie says this friend of hers heard from Mona Costatroppo that Santos cut her off flat about a month back, threatened to kill her if she made a fuss.”
“Now, Dal, do you believe that? People're always tryin' to find somethin' ugly to talk about. Here you are, always settin' yourself up as the voice of reason far as me and Lula's concerned, and you fall for this silly third-hand gossip out the mouth of a woman we both know don't have the brain of a peacock on mood pills.”
“I ain't fell for nothin'. I'm just tellin' you what I hear concerns Santos, is all. It may or may not be true, but it's out there in the air and I thought you deserved to know. Apparently the Costatroppo woman sold some of the jewelry and furniture Santos had given her and moved to New York or Chicago, afraid for her life.”
“I'd be more afraid for my life in one of those places than I would down here anywhere. And anyway, how do we know what this Troppo person done to Marcello riled him in the first place, if in fact there's any truth to the story at all?”
“Natalie Suarez claims he just got tired of her after she got a little fat and sloppy. Her friend said she'd developed a drinkin' problem.”
“There you are, then! Who wants to be around a drunk?”
“And of course there's his wife, Lina, who pretends ain't a thing wrong.”
“Maybe there ain't, Dal, you ever consider that? Marcello's a man knows his own mind, always has. Clyde didn't never have a bad word to say about him when he was alive, and I don't either. I vote we end this part of the conversation right now.”
“Fine with me, Marietta. Sorry I couldn't get to Tuesday's meetin' of the Daughters. Louis made me go with him to visit his mama in the nursin' home in Asheville. Don't make no sense draggin' me, I told him, she's so gaga. But I guess it helps him, me bein' there. What'd I miss?”
“Oh, Dal, you won't believe what Esther Pickens heard about Ruby Werlhi and Denise Sue Hilton's son-in-law. You know, Walker French-Jones, the tennis pro?”
BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY
As soon as Sailor got off the bus he headed toward the Hotel Brazil. He didn't know if it was still there but he didn't bother to check a city directory, figuring he'd find something similar in the neighborhood if necessary. From Elysian Fields he cut across the park, surprised to see so many homeless people camped out and sleeping on benches. He turned left on Frenchmen Street and there it was, the Brazil, looking as dilapidated as it had ten or more years before, but still standing. He entered, asked the elderly white male desk clerk for a room overlooking the street, paid thirty dollars for two days in advance, took his key and hiked up the stairs to the third floor. Sailor could not remember which room he and Lula had stayed in, but this one was pretty close. He opened the window, leaned out and looked east. There was the river, huge and green, with a gray Yugoslav freighter, flanked by black tugs, pushing past the Bienville Wharf.
He lay down on the bed and lit up an unfiltered Camel. The hint of a breeze blew into the room, startling Sailor for a moment. It was unexpected and caused him to shiver, despite the intense heat and high humidity. The Hotel Brazil did not provide room-cooling except during winter, when there was no heat. A strange sensation came over him, as if an invisible, gauzy-feeling substance had intruded on the finger of fresh air and draped itself around his body. Sailor's cigarette burned down steadily between the index and second fingers of his right hand, its ash building but remaining attached due to his immobility.
“Lula's here,” Sailor said. He trembled and the ash fell off the cigarette onto the floor.
Sailor swung his legs off the bed, stood up and went back over to the window. He took a swift drag on the Camel and flicked it out into the street. Directly below, two old men, one black the other white, were struggling over a half-pint bottle of Old Crow.
“That's mine!” the black man shouted.
“Hell it is!” said the white man.
“I bought it, I'mo drink it!”
“Bullshit! Half's my money! Give it!”
“I knock yo teef out, ugly mufuck, you had 'ny.”
The white man lurched toward the black man, fell to his knees and wrapped his arms around the black man's legs.
“Let go, fo I smack yo bleach head!”
“Mine, mine!” screeched the white man, who was crying now.
The black man raised the bottle to his mouth and took a long swig. People walking along the sidewalk avoided them. The black man staggered to the curb, dragging the white man, who clung stubbornly to his legs. The black man stopped and took another long drink, killing the bottle.
“Here go, mufuck,” he said, bringing the dark brown bottle down hard on the white man's head.
The glass shattered, cutting into the bald, freckled skull of the genuflecting man, the pieces scattering over the sidewalk. The white man did not release his hold on the black man's legs. He remained attached, sobbing loudly, his body heaving, the top of his head a puddle of blood and broken glass. The black man balanced himself with his hands on the hood of a dirty beige '81 Cutlass parked by the curb and kicked loose his legs, leaving the white man slumped on the ground as he stumbled away.
Sailor looked down at the crying, bleeding man whom passersby continued to ignore. A New Orleans police car pulled up in front of the hotel and two cops got out. They lifted the injured man, holding him under each arm, deposited him in the backseat and drove off. The black man, Sailor noticed, was sitting on the ground, leaning against a shabby white building on the opposite side of the street. Above the man's head, in faded black paint, were the words JESUS DIED FOR THE UNGODLY. The man's eyes were closed and there were splotches of bright red, undoubtedly the other man's blood, on the front of his short-sleeved white shirt.
Sailor went back to the bed and lay down on his back. He had no idea where to begin looking for Lula, and he did not want to contact Marietta. A picture of Perdita Durango standing on the street in Hattiesburg flashed in his brain. Lula used to say the world was weird on top, he thought. She sure was right there. Sailor rolled over into a fetal position and closed his eyes.
SAVING GRACE
Elmer Désespéré put his railroad engineer's cap over his stringy yellow-white hair and went out. At the foot of the stairs of his rooming house he stopped and took a packet of Red Man chewing tobacco from the back pocket of his Ben Davis overalls, scooped a wad with the thumb and index finger of his right hand and planted it between his teeth and cheek in the left side of his mouth. Elmer replaced the packet in his pocket and strolled down Claiborne toward Canal Street. The night air felt thick and greasy, and the sidewalk was crawling with people sweating, laughing, fighting, drinking. Police cars, their revolving red and blue lights flashing, prowled up and down both sides of the road. Trucks rumbled like stampeding dinosaurs on the overhead highway, expelling a nauseating stream of diesel mist.
Elmer loved it all. He loved being in the city of New Orleans, away from the farm forever, away from his daddy, Hershel Burt, and his older brother, Emile; though they'd never bother a soul again, since Elmer had destroyed the both of them as surely as they had destroyed his mama, Alma Ann. He had chopped his daddy and brother into a total of exactly one hundred pieces and buried one piece per acre on the land Hershel Burt owned in Evangeline Parish by the Bayou Nezpique. After doing what he had to, Elmer had walked clear to Mamou and visited Alma Ann's grave, told her she could rest easy, then hitchhiked into N.O.
Alma Ann had died ten years ago, when Elmer was nine, on November 22d, the birthday of her favorite singer, Hoagy Carmichael. Alma Ann's greatest pleasure in life, she had told Elmer, was listening to the collection of Hoagy Carmichael 78s her daddy, Bugle Lugubre, had left her. Her favorite tunes had been “Old Man Harlem,” “Ole Buttermilk Sky,” and Bugle's own favorite, “Memphis in June.” But after Alma Ann was worked to death by Hershel Burt and Emile, Hershel Burt had busted up all the records and dumped the pieces in the Crooked Creek Reservoir. Now Elmer had buried Hershel Burt just like he'd buried Bugle Lugubre's Hoagy Carmichael records. It made Elmer happy to think that the records could be replaced and that Hoagy Carmichael
would live on forever through them. Alma Ann would live on as well, by virtue of Hoagy's music and Elmer's memory, but Hershel Burt and Emile were wiped away clean as bugs off a windshield in a downpour.
The only thing Elmer needed now was a friend. He'd taken the two-thousand-four-hundred-eighty-eight dollars his daddy had kept in Alma Ann's cloisonné button box, so Elmer figured he had enough money for quite a little while to come. Walking along Claiborne, watching the people carry on, Elmer felt as if he were a visitor to an insane asylum, the only one with a pass to the outside. When he reached Canal, Elmer turned down toward the river. He was looking for a tattoo parlor to have his mama's name written over his heart. A friend would know immediately what kind of person Elmer was, he thought, as soon as he saw ALMA ANN burned into Elmer's left breast. The friend would understand the depth of Elmer's loyalty and sincerity and never betray or leave him, this Elmer knew.
The pain was gone, too. The constant headache Elmer had suffered for so many years had vanished as he'd knelt next to Alma Ann's grave in Mamou. She soothed her truest son in death as she had in life. Jesus was bunk, Elmer had decided. He'd prayed to Jesus after Alma Ann had gone, but he had not been delivered. There had been no saving grace for Elmer until he'd destroyed the two marauding angels and pacified himself in the name of Alma Ann. It was he who shone, not Jesus. Jesus was dead and he, Elmer, was alive. He would carry Alma Ann's name on his body and his friend would understand and love him for it.
“Say, ma'am,” Elmer said to a middle-aged woman headed in the opposite direction, “there a place near here a sober man can buy himself a expert tattoo?”
“I suppose there must be,” she said, “farther along closer to the port.”
“Alma Ann blesses you, ma'am,” said Elmer, walking on, spitting tobacco juice on the sidewalk.
The woman stared after him and was surprised to see that he was barefoot.
HEART TALK
“Speakin' of abuse?” said Beany, as she fed Madonna Kim her bottle of formula. “I didn't know that's what Elmo was doin' until I saw them women on Oprah's show talkin' about how their husbands, mostly ex now, 'course, like Elmo and me, used to take all kinds of advantages. Worst is the ones beat 'em up, which Elmo only done once to me, when he was stewed and I threw a pet rock at him after I'd found out from Mimsy Bavard the baby Etta Foy was havin' was his.”
It was nine A.M. and Beany and Lula were sitting on the front porch swing of the house in Metairie, discussing men. Pace and Lance were on the lawn shooting rubber-tipped arrows at a target, trading off turns with the only bow.
“Bob Lee wouldn't never hit me, even if he thought he had a reason to. He takes off, he's angry enough. Comes back about two hours later and raids the refrigerator.”
“Where's he go?”
“Oh, mostly he'll drive around, or maybe go to a movie at the mall. One time he come home with this really strange look on his face. I asked him, âYou still mad at me, Bob Lee?' I don't recall now what it was set him off in the first place. I think somethin' to do with my lettin' Lance cry too long. Bob Lee's a real softie it comes to babies cryin', he'll just run and pick 'em up. I told him you got to let 'em settle down on their own or they just get so damned spoiled they're always fussin'. Anyway, he come in lookin' like a wild dog just bit the head off his favorite cat. And Lord knows, Bob Lee loves cats.”
“How come you ain't got any then?”
“Lergic. Me and Lance both. Bugs Bob Lee, but nothin' we can do about it. I tell him he's got his gators to pet.”
“So what weirded him out?”
“I'm tellin' you, this movie he seen, called
Blue Velvet
. You seen it?”
“No. Ain't heard of it.”
“After he seen it, Bob Lee couldn't even eat. He wouldn't let me go see it, though I wanted to. I woulda gone anyway, of course, but with Lance
bein' a baby then I didn't get a chance. Bob Lee told me he coulda never imagined the awful behavior went on in that movie. He did say there was a couple pretty women in it.”
“Was it a porno?”
“Don't think so. Bob Lee don't care for 'em, though I don't mind 'em once in awhile if there's some laughs in it. Sorta horrifies Bob Lee I can take sex less than serious sometimes. This
Blue Velvet
, though, must be somethin' else entirely. He said it made his brain shut down, like all the fuses blew.”