“Your mama was pregnant with you and we was stuck like bugs in a bottle, stranded in a podunk town called Big Tuna. Met a mean fella there named Bobby Peru. Lula said he was a black angel and told me I should stay away from him, but of course I didn't pay no attention and got hooked in on a plan to rob a feed store over to the county seat, Iraaq. We went ahead and done it and Bobby got his head blowed off. I got caught, of course, and Peru's girlfriend, a strange Tex-Mex gal named Perdita Durango, who was drivin' the getaway car, escaped. They sent me to Huntsville, where I put in ten years down to the hour.”
“Whatever happened to Perdita Durango?”
Sailor smiled, lifted the brown bottle to his lips and took a sip.
“Oh, she's around somewhere, I suspect. A Grade-A piece of work like her don't just fade away.”
“What was it like inside the walls, Daddy? How'd you get by?”
“Remindin' myself every minute of every day how stupid I was to end up there in the first place. Knew if I was still alive when I got out I'd do anything, any kind of straight job, not to go back again. And I thought about your mama and you, how you-all were gettin' along. Figured you both were better off without me, the way I'd been goin', but knew if I had the chance to change, I would. Until I could prove it to myself, though, it wouldn't do to make you and your mama suffer my ignorance. That's why it took a little while after I got sprung for us to get back together. I had me some serious readjustin' to do.”
“Bet there's some lost souls behind them bars.”
“The lostest, son. Now eat your pie and drink that beer and we'll get us some rest. Tomorrow's already feelin' like it's gonna be longer'n today.”
AFTER HOURS
Sailor flopped down into the Niagara, levered the footrest chest high, fingered the space command and flipped on the new RCA 24-inch he'd bought at Shongaloo's Entertainment Center right after his recent raise from Gator Gone. He dotted the i across cable country until it hit channel 62, when the sound of CCR's “Bad Moon Risin' ” stopped him. It was past one o'clock in the morning. Pace was asleep upstairs and Lula was at Beany's, baking cakes for the Church of Reason, Redemption and Resistance to God's Detractors fundraiser. Sailor ticked the volume up a couple of notches. Suddenly the music faded out and a man's face in close-up came on the screen. The man was about forty years old, he had blond, crew-cut hair, a big nose that looked like it had been sloppily put-tied on, and a dark brown goatee.
“Howdy, folks!” said the man, his duckegg-blue eyes blazing out of the set like laser beams. “I'm Sparky!”
The camera pulled back to reveal Sparky standing in front of an old-fashioned drugstore display case. Behind the counter and just to the side of Sparky's left shoulder was another man of the same approximate age but four inches taller. This man had thick, bushy black hair with a severe widow's peak and a discernibly penciled-in mustache under a long, sharply pointed nose.
“This asparagus-shaped fella behind me's my partner, Buddy,” Sparky said, and Buddy nodded. “We'd like to welcome you-all to Sparky and Buddy's House of SanterÃa, the store that has everything can make that special ceremony just right.”
The words SPARKY & BUDDY S HOUSE OF SANTERIA 1617 EARL LONG CAUSEWAY WAGGAMAN, LOUISIANA flashed on the screen in giant red letters superimposed over the two men. The letters stopped flashing and Sailor sat up and took a closer look. Blood root suspended from the ceiling and dozens of jars filled with herbs, votive candles in a variety of colors, and various unidentifiable objects lined the rows of shelves behind Sparky and Buddy. Sparky raised his arms like Richard Nixon used to, the fingers of each hand formed in a V.
“We've got the needs for the deeds, ladies and gentlemen. We've got the voodoo for you! Oh, yes! We've got the voodoo, hoodoo, Bonpo tonic, Druid fluid, Satan-ratin', Rosicrucian solution, Upper Nile stylin', Lower Nile bile'n Amon-Ra hexes, Tao of all sexes, White Goddess juice'll kick Kundalini loose, the Chung-Wa potion'n ev'ry santerÃa notion!”
Sparky lowered his arms, walked forward past the camera eye, then returned carrying two twisting snakes in each hand.
“Get a load of the size of these rattles, Pentecostals!” he shouted, raising his right arm, the one draped with a pair of diamondbacks. “And ladies, check out these elegant coachwhips!” Sparky raised his left arm to show them off. “Hey, Buddy! Tell the good folks what else we got!”
Sparky walked off-camera again and Buddy leaned forward over the counter, pointing to the floor with his right hand.
“Take a good look here, people,” he said, and the camera eye dipped down, closing in on a one-hundred-ten-pound brindled pit bull stretched out on the floor, his head resting between his front paws, a seeing-eye harness strapped to his barrel chest. Next to his enormous head was a black water bowl with the name ELVIS stenciled on it in raised white letters. “We got a good selection of man's best friends, too.”
Sparky's legs came back into view and the camera panned back up.
“Mullahs, mullahs, mullahs!” Sparky intoned. “You got trouble with the Christian Militia? Come on down! And hey, troops! Them mullahs makin' you a cardiac case? Those Ayatollah rollers got you grittin' your bicuspids? You-all come on down, too! We are a hundred and five percent bona fide non-sectarian here at Sparky and Buddy's!”
Again the giant red letters spelling out SPARKY & BUDDY S HOUSE OF SANTERIA 1617 EARL LONG CAUSEWAY WAGGAMAN, LOUISIANA flashed on the screen.
“Right, Buddy?” Sparky said, and the flashing letters blinked off.
“Affirmative, Sparky!”
“And, Buddy, we got a special I ain't even told my mama about! This week only we discountin' mojos. Mojos for luck, love, recedin' hairlines, bald spots, money honey andâmy own favorite, works like a charmâirregularity. This one's guaranteed to get you goin' and flowin'!”
Sailor watched as from behind the counter Buddy lifted up two wine
glasses filled to the brim with amber liquid. He handed one to Sparky and together they raised the glasses high.
“Well, Buddy, as our old pal Manuel used to say in Tampa many years ago,
salud
and happy days! This is the four-hundred-sixty-sixth appearance we've made for Sparky and Buddy's House of SanterÃa. Remember, we're at 1617 Earl Long Causeway, in the community of Waggaman, servicin' all of south Louisiana. Y'all come on down!”
“Bad Moon Risin' ” started up again and the giant red letters reappeared for several seconds before the station segued into the video of L.L. Cool J's “Big Ole Butt.” Sailor pressed the OFF button on his space command. He sat still for a minute, then lifted his left arm and with his fingers explored the crown area of his head where Lula had told him his hair was thinning. He got up and went over to the hall table, picked up the pencil and pad next to the telephone and wrote down Sparky and Buddy's address.
SNAKES IN THE FOREST
“They do it different now, Lula. Ain't hardly no cuttin' to speak of. Drop a line in through the navel and reel the creature out. Stick a Band-Aid on it. Make two tiny incisions on the sides, is all.”
“But, Mama, you gotta stay in the hospital least one night. The doctor told you that.”
“Don't know why. I might could take off right out of there, I feel good enough.”
“Doctor says if there's a stone they gonna have to cut it out the regular way. That happens, you'll be in there three, four days.”
“There ain't no stone and I ain't lettin' 'em run no tubes through me.”
“You'll let 'em do what's necessary, Mama. This is your gall bladder we're discussin' now, not no perm job. I'll be into Charlotte tomorrow at noon, so I'll see you about one-thirty, all goes well. Dal's pickin' me up.”
“You already talked to her?”
“Of course, Mama. We got it worked out how to take care of you.”
“You're still the one needs takin' care of, Lula. How's my grandboy doin', anyway?”
“Pace is just fine, and so's Sailor. He got him a raise a couple weeks back. Bob Lee's Gator Gone repellent's sellin' better'n ever.”
“Sailor throw the new money away on a TV or a truck?”
“Oh, Mama, you ain't never gonna give him a chance to redeem himself, are you?”
“Guess you're still attendin' that crackpot church, else you wouldn't be usin' that word.”
“The Church of Reason, Redemption and Resistance to God's Detractors ain't no kinda crackpot outfit, Mama, and you know it.”
“Know nothin' of the kind. Saw where that preacher of yours got arrested for havin' a video camera hid in the ladies' restroom at the church buildin'.”
“It wasn't Reverend Plenty put it there, Mama. There's always snakes in the forest.”
“With that type of weird individual leadin' the flock, Lula, you can't expect no better. Reverend Willie Thursday spoke here in Bay St. Clement last Sunday about false prophets like Goodin Plenty, sayin' how the world depends on them to save it. That's stupid talk, Lula. No way the world's welfare revolves around any one person. You'd best get shut of that nut case soon as now.”
“The Three R's is right thinkin', Mama. Goodin Plenty just got a different way of gettin' his point across.”
“Such as when he run off to Barbados with his twelve-and-a-half-year-old stepdaughter and she said after how he made her do them disgustin' things with chicken parts!”
“Mama, Rima Dot Duguid done long since been committed. And you tellin' me now you believe what you read in the
National Enquirer
?”
“If she's in the bin, it's no thanks to that perverted sinner.”
“Mama, let's stop this. You gotta get your mind right for the comin ordeal. I'll see you tomorrow.”
“Just as well. Here's Dalceda now, comin' in the back door.”
“Bye, Mama. Love you.”
“Love you, Lula. Dal says for me to assure you she'll be at the airport on time. That is if Monty, her new Lhasa apso, don't play sick again.”
“I'm sure everything'll be fine, Mama. Bye.”
GOOD ENOUGH
Pace got up late. He didn't want to go to school. He lay in his bed, listening for noises in the house. Lula had delivered her cakes to the church and then had Beany drive her to the airport. Sailor was at the Gator Gone warehouse. Pace opened the drawer of his bedside table, took out a pack of Camels and shook one loose. He reached back into the drawer and found a book of matches that had the words WHATEVER HAPPENED TO SEAN FLYNN? printed on it, struck one and lit up the cigarette.
He thought about this deal with the Rattler brothers, and the more he thought about it the less he liked it. Now that he knew the score, however, there would be no easy way to back out. The Rattlers, Smokey Joe in particular, would not take kindly to the idea of Pace's walking around with this information in his head. Either they'd have to alter their plans and choose another target, or do something about Pace, and Pace figured the Rattlers didn't take full possession of more than one idea at a time.
The other night Pace had watched a movie on TV with Sailor called
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
. It was about an out-of-luck American piano player in Mexico who searches for the body of a guy who'd impregnated the daughter of a wealthy
patrón
. The American must cut off the corpse's head and bring it to the
patrón
in order to earn a reward. The movie, Pace remembered, got progressively weirder and wackier, with the American doublecrossing and being doublecrossed by everyone he meets. There was a lot of killing, so much killing that the movie became kind of a comedy, with mutilation upon mutilation. The last part was the best, he thought, when the American has the head in a sack covered with flies as he drives his battered old convertible through the sun-baked, scabrous Mexican countryside, swatting away the flies that threaten to engulf him. Pace wondered why the American didn't just put the head in the trunk of the car.
The Rattlers weren't about to let him beg off. Better to tough it out, Pace decided. Lefty Grove and Smokey Joe didn't fool around, and
Bring Me the Head of Pace Roscoe Ripley
was one movie Marietta Fortune's only grandboy was insufficiently prepared to appreciate. Pace lolled around
the house most of the day, reading around in one schoolbook and another without retaining much of anything. He didn't so much dislike school as he disliked having to show up there every weekday. If attendance were voluntary, he thought, then school wouldn't be so bad. He could quit in another year, when he turned sixteen, but he knew that his parents wouldn't like it. Sailor hadn't finished grammar school, so of course he expected Pace to go to college and go on to become president of the United States or something. Pace wondered how many presidents had been the son of a twice-convicted felon.
At four o'clock the telephone rang and Pace answered it.
“Pace, honey, that you?”
“Yes, Mama. You at Grandmama's?”
“I am. Just wanted you and Daddy to know I made it safe and sound. Auntie Dal picked me up at the Charlotte airport and we drove through a absolute terror of a rainstorm all the way to Bay St. Clement. Started pourin' the instant our plane landed and it's still comin' down like a shower of Pygmy darts on a safari. Lightnin', too. Sky's blood red. How's it there?”
Pace looked out a window.
“Nothin' special. Sorta gray.”
“How was school today?”
“Same as ever.”
“Okay, sweetie pie. You need somethin' and Daddy ain't around, go to Beany, you hear?”