Sailor hung up.
“What'd they say, Sail? Tell me!”
“Boys have it covered, peanut. They're sendin' a new kidney to North Carolina tonight.”
“Gonna cost a arm or leg, I bet.”
Sailor laughed. “No, sweetheart, it ain't. It's free.”
“Them two're somethin' else. Shows you how much good there still is left in the world, Sail. Just gotta know where to look.”
“Don't know about good, Lula, but could be Johnnie Farragut'll be able to take a real piss again one of these days.”
THE PROPOSAL
“âWhen the phantoms cease for a moment to pass and repass on the black veil which I have before my eyes, there are other torturesâthere are overwhelming comparisons. I say to myself, if I had remained an honest man, at this moment I should be free, tranquil, happy, loved, and honored by mine own, instead of being blind and chained in this dungeon, at the mercy of my accomplices.'
“ âAlas! the regret of happiness, lost by crime, is the first step toward repentance. And when to this repentance is added an expiation of frightful severityâan expiation which changes life into a long sleep filled with avenging hallucinations of desperate reflections, perhaps then the pardon of man will followâ' ”
“Marry me, Marietta,” said Santos.
Marietta stopped reading, closed the book and looked up at him. His face was green and puffy and his eyes were closed.
“Marietta Pace, will you marry me?”
She squeezed his right hand, the one with a thumb, with her left.
“Yes, Marcello,” said Marietta, “I will.”
POISON
“I still ain't sure we're doin' the right thing. I mean, we ain't even relatives.”
“Maybe there ain't nothin' we can do, peanut, but I got a feelin' this is a lost girl could use a hand.”
Sailor had just turned the Sedan de Ville onto Highway 6 toward Oxford.
“Sail, look how these trees is bein' strangled by kudzu. Them vines strap around 'em like boas on bunnies.”
“No stoppin' it, I guess. Kudzu's nature's version of The Blob.”
“Wonder if Beany's rememberin' to turn my worms.”
Sailor turned up the radio.
“In Miami yesterday,” said a newscaster, “a man and a woman died after drinking a six-pack of a Colombian soft drink laced heavily with cocaine. Pony Malta de Bavaria, an imported beverage that has been available for sale in limited quantities in independent grocery stores in the area known as Little Havana, was removed from shelves this morning by order of the Greater Miami Board of Health.”
“Used to be Co-Cola had cocaine in it, didn't it, Sailor?”
“Think maybe the first few batches did, till the government figured out a better way to make money off it.”
Oxford came up fast and Sailor slowed the Cad as they entered the town. He drove in on Old Taylor Road and followed the signs to the square, where he stopped and asked an old man for directions to the police station.
“They holdin' the âLast Kiss' girl there, you know,” said the man. “I been over but they ain't lettin' nobody in.”
The old man was wearing a faded, torn yellow tee shirt that had the words FREE BYRON DE LA BECKWITH on it in black block letters. The man had no hair and no visible teeth, and as he pointed across the square with his left hand, Sailor noticed that the index finger was the only remaining digit on it.
“Lafayette County Jail's just yonder, past the square. Follow around
and it'll be on your right. Tickets to view a poison pelt like her'd move faster'n jumper cables at a nigger funeral, I'll guarantee.”
Sailor nodded at the man, drove to the jail and parked on the street in front. In the space ahead was a Mercedes-Benz 600 sedan with a Lauderdale County personalized license plate that read WHY NOT.
“Bet that belongs to her parents,” said Lula.
“We'll find out,” said Sailor, as he opened his door.
As soon as Sailor and Lula entered the station, Consuelo Whynot, who was standing with a well-dressed middle-aged couple and a sheriff, shouted, “They're the ones picked me up in Jackson! They'll tell you 'bout how I was runnin' from that deranged boy!”
“That true?” asked the sheriff, walking toward Sailor and Lula.
“It's true we give her a lift from Jackson to Batesville,” said Sailor, “but we don't know nothin' 'bout no boy.”
“Why you here?”
“Heard about the incident on the TV news in Memphis, where we was stayin',” said Lula. “Today's my husband's fiftieth birthday, which we was plannin' to celebrate, but he thought it'd be best we drove down and see she needed help.”
“You-all sure I didn't tell you 'bout that hor'ble Wesley Nisbet?” asked Consuelo.
“Not that I recall,” said Sailor. “You?” he asked Lula.
“Uh-uh.”
“I give him one kiss, is all,” said Consuelo. “I swear. Said he'd leave me'n Venus be if I did. Had a gun, that boy. Then he told us unless we did a act of love while he watched, he was gonna kidnap me. That's when Venus took after him and the cat caught the chicken. Mama, you got a cigarette?”
The well-dressed woman took a pack of Mores from her purse, removed one and handed it to Consuelo.
“Need a blaze,” Consuelo said.
Her mother produced a gold lighter with the initials SOW on it and lit Consuelo's cigarette.
“Sailor, look,” said Lula, “she smokes the same brand as me.”
“So you folks don't know nothin' 'bout this Nisbet?” asked the sheriff.
“We don't,” Sailor said.
“Look, sheriff,” said the well-dressed man, “none of this really matters, does it? Consuelo will be with us if you need her. We'll make sure she don't leave home again until this case is cleared up satisfact'rily.”
“You can take her,” the sheriff said. “Ain't nothin' I can charge her with. It's you and your wife might have a problem, bein' she's a minor.”
“Old enough to get married without nobody's permission,” said Consuelo. “Though there ain't a man alive can replace Venus in my affections.”
“Let's go, Sail,” Lula said. “Nobody needs us here.”
“Okay, peanut. So long, Consuelo. Good luck.”
Consuelo took a deep drag on the More and pushed her free hand back through her brushfire of hair. She pursed her lips and exhaled, then smiled at Sailor.
“Elvis has left the buildin',” she said.
SOLO
John Gray lived, ate and worked alone. He had risen only several minutes prior to the phone call from S&B Organ Retrieval, his best customer. The day had begun well for John Gray, and he hummed the tune of “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” while he shaved. John Gray was forty-five years old, he was slightly more than six-feet three-inches tall, weighed two-hundred-ten well-muscled pounds, wore a bushy black hair weave, and a thick Mexican
bandido
-style mustache that he coated with black Kiwi shoe polish. His eyes were light green, although on a bright afternoon, when he wasn't wearing dark glasses, they turned almost yellow. He wore a three-piece, Wall Street gray Brooks Brothers suit every day, with a red handkerchief in the breast pocket, and black Reebok dress shoes.
John Gray knew where to go for product. He kept his supercharged, midnight blue 5.0-liter Mustang under control as he glided through the Memphis streets. When he arrived at the corner of Murnau and Lewton, he slid to the curb and let the engine idle while he waited. The neighborhood appeared deserted, with abandoned buildings on all sides, but within thirty seconds, two teenaged boys appeared, both wearing Bart Simpson tee shirts, black Levi's and Air Jordans. They came over to the Mustang.
“Got ice, bro',” one of the boys said, as they both leaned their heads toward John Gray, “blow you away.”
“No,” said John Gray, as he brought up the nine-millimeter machine pistol he'd been holding on his lap, “blow
you
away.”
He shot both boys point-blank once each in their foreheads, got out of the car, picked them up, placed them carefully in the trunk and wrapped a heavy brown blanket tightly around the bodies.
As he drove at a modest speed toward the S&B office, John Gray began to sing “Angelo castro e bel” from Donizetti's
Il Duca d'Alba.
Though not a true tenor, John Gray did his best to mimic Caruso's interpretation of the piece, imagining himself as Marcello de Bruges pouring his heart out for Amelia d'Egmont, who is at that moment on her way to meet him.
LIFE AS WE KNOW IT
Sailor and Lula stopped to eat at the Mayflower Cafe on Capitol Street in Jackson on their way home. Most of downtown Jackson had been recently torn down, including the grand old Heidelberg Hotel, and replaced by faceless state government buildings and parking lots. Not that most of the city was that old, Sherman having torched everything that would burn on his march to Atlanta during the unpleasantness known unpopularly as the War Between the States. About the only building left standing after the Yankees left had been the old Capitol. Since the demise of Tom and Woody's Mississippi Diner, the Mayflower was pretty much the end of the line for the downtown restaurant business.
“Same two Greek brothers been operatin' this place since forever,” Sailor said to Lula, as they seated themselves in a red leather booth.
He pointed to two ancient-looking, bald-headed, big-nosed men sitting at a Formica table by the cash register. Above the register on the wall was a framed photograph of a man whom both brothers resembled closely.
“That picture's prob'ly of their daddy,” said Sailor. “Food's as good here as at the Acme, I recall. Ain't been in since them few months we was apart followin' my release from Huntsville. Those were dark days for me, peanut.”
“I know, Sail. They were for me, too.”
Sailor shook his head. “Never will forget workin' in that lumberyard in Petal, and livin' in that crummy furnished room over the St. Walburga Thrift Store in Hattiesburg. Whew, that was a bad deal. Come through here and stayed a few days after I left you and Pace in N.O.”
“Let's not talk about it, Sailor. Them days is long gone. Look at the good life we created together since then.”
Sailor reached across the table and put his hands over Lula's.
“I'm fine, peanut. You don't hear me complainin'. Hate seein' a bad fam'ly situation like the Whynots, is all.”
“Won't be no easy road for that Consuelo. Least not for a while.”
“She's wild in the country, okay.”
A waitress came over and Sailor ordered fried oysters, shrimp, onion rings, fries and two glasses of iced tea.
“That should do it,” he said. “What you gonna have, Lula?”
After they'd eaten, Sailor suggested that they not drive all the way home that night, and Lula agreed. They got a room at the Millsaps Buie House on North State Street, a Victorian relic that had originally been the residence of Confederate Major Reuben Webster Millsaps, founder of the local Methodist College, whose house was now operated as an inn. Lula loved the elegant old bed and breakfast place, and she and Sailor slept late the next day, neither of them being in a particular hurry to find out what disastrous occurrence came next.
It was Lula who made the discovery a few minutes after they'd gotten home.
“Sailor! Come see these worms! They're all dead!”
“How could that be, peanut?” Sailor said, running into the backyard, carrying a letter in his right hand. “Thought you told me Beany was watchin' 'em.”
“She musta left the hose on the rose bushes too long, and the water seeped into the worm bin and drowned 'em. Sailor, this is the worst!”
“Maybe not, peanut.”
He handed Lula the letter.
“It's from Pace,” she said.
Sailor nodded. “Go on and read it.”
Dear Mama and Daddy,
I am just back from the trek and am writing to tell you the best news of my life. I have met a great girl, a woman I should say, from New York. Actually she is from Brooklyn which is about the same place she says. Her name is Rhoda Gombowicz and yes, she is Jewish. She is about the first Jewish person I have ever known to my knowledge. Rhoda is very beautiful with hair kind of like yours Mama and big brown eyes. Also she is incredibly smart. Sometimes she talks too fast for me and I have to tell her to slow down but she doesn't mind my telling her that. She says everyone in New York talks that way which is one of the reasons she likes me so much she says because I don't. Any way Rhoda and I are in love now and I asked her to marry me when we were on a peak in the Himalayas. She said no woman
would say no being proposed to in that spot so she said yes. The one problem is that Rhoda's parents won't let her marry a man who is not Jewish so I have agreed to convert to the Jewish religion. The only religions I know about are Baptist, Buddhist, and Bonpo, so why not? We will leave in a week for New York to meet her family and where I will find out what it takes to become Jewish. I will call or write to you from there. Rhoda says we should live in Brooklyn because that is where her family is. Rhoda is a mental therapist who helps people with their problems by talking to them not a physical therapist who performs rubdowns. You'll like her I know. She is 32 years old five years older than me and never married. Rhoda says if I want I can work in the diamond business with her father and four brothers. I told her I would wait and see about that part. Don't worry about me or anything. The next time you hear from me will be from Brooklyn!
Love, your favorite (and only) son,
Pace Roscoe Ripley