RUNNING INTO DARKNESS
Rather than take 10 into 55 around the lake, the fast way, Sailor decided to drive over the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway and head west just before Covington on Interstate 12, then pick up 55 north of Pontchartrain, which would take them all the way into Memphis. He and Lula had agreed to take their time, and Sailor kept the Sedan de Ville at a respectable sixty as they cruised across twenty-four scenic miles of the most polluted lake south of Erie.
“Ever tell you about the time I seen a corpse floatin' here?” he said.
Lula was adjusting her eye makeup in the visor mirror on the passenger side of the front seat. She'd had her eyelids tinted the day before and she wasn't sure that she liked the effect. They made her eyes look sunken or something, she thought. Lula studied them now and only half paid attention to what Sailor was saying.
“Tell me what, darlin'?”
“Me'n Slim Leake was takin' his nine-year old-nephew, Pharaoh Sanders Leake, whose daddyâSlim's brother, Otis Blackwell Leakeâteaches wind instruments at LSU, out for a boat ride, and here come a corpse up on the port side, bloated and fumin' like a abcess on a spaniel's belly.”
Lula frowned into the mirror, flipped up the visor and put her beauty utensils into her purse.
“Say what about a dog?”
“No, peanut, I'm tellin' you about a dead body we come across on Pontchartrain here one mornin'.”
“Whose body?”
“I don't know. Man drowned or was dumped. Looked like a purple balloon with bad air steamin' out all pores. Stank fierce.”
“Delightful. What'd y'all do?”
“Went on and rowed around a while, till Pharoah'd had enough, then took it in and told the dockmaster.”
“What'd he say?”
Sailor slipped a Camel from the open pack in his left front shirt
pocket, stuck it between his lips, pulled out a black book of matches with a white skull-and-crossbones on it under the words PURVIS PETTY'S PIRATE LOUNGE, flipped the cover and lit the cigarette with one hand, tossed the match out the window, inhaled deeply, and dropped the matchbook back into his pocket.
“Said floaters was a regular feature of the lake and there weren't no extra charge. Didn't seem to excite him none, though before we left I noticed he'd uncovered the NO in front of the SWIMMING ALLOWED sign on the dock. Slim Leakeâyou remember, back then he was the Gator Gone distribution manager in Port Allen? Slim said the pollution level of the lake was checked daily, and dependin' on the readin', swimmin' was allowed or not.”
“Wouldn't never get me in this sewer. Whatever happened to Slim Leake, anyway? He reminded me a little of that movie actor, the one looked like a cute bloodhound. Harry Dean Stanton.”
“Yeah, I remember him. He's the one in
The Missouri Breaks
is ridin' with some old boys from Montana into Canada when they hear some horrible animal noise they can't I.D., and Harry Dean says, âThe further north you go, the more things eat your horse.' Whoever wrote that line had a real talent. Always thought that was a pretty fair analysis of the human condition, myself.”
“So what about Slim Leake?”
“Not real certain. He and Nelda Bea divorced, of course, his work went to hell in a hurry, he was drinkin' a lot and Bob Lee had to let him go. Last I heard he was up north in Ohio, managin' a trailer park.”
“Nice man like Slim deserved better'n Nelda Bea. She was one impatient type of woman.”
Sailor inhaled and exhaled a stream of smoke from his nostrils without removing the cigarette from his mouth. Lula looked at him and wondered how many thousands of times she'd seen Sailor pull on a Camel.
“Man might be better off without what he ain't been without since he can't recall,” Sailor said, “only there ain't no way he can imagine bein' without it.”
Lula nodded. “You know, honey, I'm givin' up smokin'. I got a pack of Mores with me but I ain't gonna crack 'em. This trip's a good occasion to quit.”
“More power to ya, peanut. You quit forty, fifty times before. It prob'ly ain't impossible.”
Lula stared out the window at the water. Thirty years ago she and Sailor had been on the move like this, only then they were running into darkness. She could recall the feeling all too well, and there hadn't really been a day since that she'd been entirely free of the memory. They were rolling in the light today, though, and Lula knew she should be thankful for it, but somehow the thought of that crazy, out of control time shook her in a way nothing else could.
“Feels fine bein' back on the road, peanut, don't it?”
Sailor tossed his half-burned butt out the window.
“Ain't no substitute,” said Lula. “Rest of the world other than what's outside the windshield fades right out. Like yesterday? I was readin' in the paper about a ninety-five-year-old man murdered a eighty-eight-year-old woman in her apartment in New York City.”
“How'd he do it? Hammer her with his crutch?”
Lula nodded. “Knocked her out with a lead bar he used for therapy.” “Musta been he caught her with a younger man of ninety-two.”
“Uh-uh. Said she'd tried to kill him on orders from the ashes of her dead husband, which she kept in a box on her bedroom dresser. Man accused her of poisonin' fifteen people and practicin' voodoo. Said she'd put a curse on him preventin' him from havin' proper sexual relations and causin' his wheelchair to rust.”
“Guess there's no guarantee of goin' gentle into the good night, or however that poem says.”
Lula looked at Sailor and smiled. “After all these years, Sail, darlin', you're still capable of surprisin' me.”
Sailor laughed. “What you mean, sweetheart?”
“Quotin' poetry and all. I like it.”
“Well, I like you.”
“I know it, Sailor Ripley. I surely do. And I really do think that despite ever'thin's happened to us, we got a charmed life.”
Lula reached up and tied her long, gray-black hair back into a ponytail and put on a new pair of fake tortoise-shell Ray-Bans she'd purchased the day before at the Rexall. A huge beige pelican fell out of the sky, bounced off the roof of the car and tumbled over the passenger side into the lake.
EVERY MAN A KING
“Just want to say one thing,” said Wesley Nisbet, “before we get to anywhere, and I don't mean for you to get the wrong idea.”
“What's exactly a wrong idea?” asked Consuelo.
“Tough enough tellin' right and wrong in doin', here you come with thinkin'. You talkin' 'bout believin' evil?”
Wesley passed a gray-primered Dodge Shadow that had the driver's flabby left arm hanging out the window.
“Only a man can make a real woman out of you, is all.”
“You a medical man, I take it.”
Wesley shook his head. “Was a woman in Greenville, guess it was, convinced herself the King of Sweden was in love with her. Took to tellin' everyone she met how the King of Sweden was comin' to town soon to take her away with him and they'd live in his snow palace over there in Europe. She wrote to him every day for years, even though she never got no answer. Ever'body figured she was just a harmless person and was pretty well amused by her obsession.”
“How you know all this?” Consuelo asked.
“Read it in a book about sexual behavior written by a doctor. So guess what happened? The King of Sweden, she finds out, is comin' to Memphis to visit Graceland durin' a goodwill trip. Turns out he's a big fan of Elvis. The woman tells ever'one she's meetin' the King in Memphis, closes up her house, takes her money out of the bank and drives to Tennessee. On the day the King of Sweden shows up at Graceland, there she is at the gate, waitin' for him. Naturally, he don't notice her and goes right on in.”
“She couldn't go back to Greenville after that.”
“Sticks by the gate, gettin' crazier by the minute, and when the King comes out, she pulls a gun from her purse and tries to shoot him, only her aim ain't no good and the bullet hits a tourist from France.”
“They musta locked her up for good.”
“Uh-uh. She beat 'em to it. Put the pistol in her mouth and blew her brains back to Miss'ippi, right in front of the King of Sweden and
ever'body. Doctor who wrote the book said someway the woman had developed a strange condition called De Clerambault's Syndrome, meanin' she was way out of line concernin' her object of affection. I copied out the name of her disease and memorized it.”
“Why you tellin' me this, Wesley Nisbet?”
“Your feelin's directed toward this Venus ain't normal, either. There's prob'ly a name for it, too.”
Wesley sped up and passed a powder blue BMW with California license plates being driven by a woman wearing a blond wig and large, orange-tinted sunglasses. The woman gave Wesley the finger as he went by.
“Nice folks, them California people,” he said.
“Why you so concerned about me?” asked Consuelo. “You don't even know me, and you ain't gonna get to, neither.”
“It's Venus I'm mostly curious about. I'm thinkin' I'd like to meet her. Maybe we three can have us a party.”
“Wesley, you're givin' me a ride and all, which I appreciate, but I got to say you ain't nearly the answer to nobody's dreams.”
Wesley laughed. “Just could be we'll find out there's any truth to that, Miss Whynot, honey.”
Consuelo arched her back and stretched her arms behind her, which made her nipples perk up under the polkadots. She held the pose long enough for Wesley to notice, then relaxed.
“Death and destruction ain't never more than a kiss away,” she said.
“Woman shot at the King of Sweden knew that much.”
RED BIRD
Sailor and Lula sat in a tan Naugahyde booth in Rebel Billy's Truckstop off 55 near Bogue Chitto, eating bowls of chili and drinking Barq's. Sailor was reading the
Clarion-Ledger
he'd bought from a box out front.
“Guess we been real lucky with Pace, peanut,” he said.
Lula looked over the red lumps on her tablespoon at the top of Sailor's head and noticed that the bald spot on his crown was growing larger. Sailor was supersensitive about losing his hair. Whenever Lula said anything about it, like suggesting he get a weave or try Monoxidil, he got upset, so she ignored the urge to reiterate her feelings regarding the situation.
“Why you say that, sweetheart? I mean, you're right and all, but what made you think of it?”
Lula stuck the spoon into her mouth.
“Item here in the Jackson paper. Headline says, âSorrow Ends in Death,' and underneath that, âBoy, 12, Hangs Self after Killing Red Bird.' Story's out of San Antonio.”
Lula retracted the spoon. “Nothin' good happens in Texas, I'm convinced.”
“Here it is: âConscience-stricken after he had shot and killed a red bird, Wyatt Toomey, twelve years old, hanged himself here last night. The body was found by his sister. A signed note addressed to his parents told the motive for the act.' This is what he wrote: âI killed myself on account of me shooting a red bird. Goodby mother and daddy. I'll see you some day.' ”
“Jesus, Sail, that's a terrible story.”
Sailor folded the newspaper to another page.
“Hard to know what a kid's really thinkin',” he said. “Pace had himself a few scrapes, of course, but he got clean, thank the Lord.”
“Thanks to you, too, Sail. You been a fine daddy. Want you to know I appreciate it.”
Sailor smiled, blew Lula a kiss and leaned back in his corner of the booth and lit up a Camel.
“Hope you don't mind my smokin', peanut. I may be a good daddy but I ain't always such a clean liver.”
A waitress came over carrying a pot of coffee.
“Need refills?” she asked.
Sailor covered his cup with his left palm.
“I'm peaceful,” he said. “Peanut?”
Lula nodded. “Don't mind a drop.”
“Folks don't drink so much coffee they used to,” said the waitress, as she poured. “Don't smoke, neither.”
The waitress carried a good one-hundred-eighty-five pounds on her five-feet two-inches. She was about forty-five, Sailor guessed, and she reeked of alcohol. Sailor figured her for a nighttime cheap gin drinker. Five minutes after she was in her trailer door after work, he imagined, she'd be kicked back in her Barcalounger watching the news, four fingers of Gilbey's over a couple of cubes in a half-frosted chimney in one hand and five inches of menthol in the other.
“My wife's tryin' to quit,” he said.
“I got thirty years worth of tar and nicotine in me,” said the waitress,
“too late to stop. Anyway, I like it. This health thing's gone just about far as it can now, I reckon. What with AIDS and the Big C, not to mention heart disease and drug-related crimes, might as well let yourself go a little and get some pleasure out of life. My son, Orwell, he's twenty-two now, was born deaf and with a withered-up left arm? He won't eat nothin' but raw vegetables, no meat or dairy. Runs three miles ev'ry damn mornin' before seven, then goes to work at the telephone office. In bed by nine-thirty each night. You'd think Orwell'd want to cut loose, 'specially after the cards he been dealt, but he figures he might could live forever he don't smoke or drink liquor and sticks to eatin' greens. What for? That ain't livin', it's runnin' spooked. Can't stand to see it, but half the world's in the coward's way at present. You folks take care now. Highway's full of God's worst mistakes.”