Sailor & Lula (7 page)

“Did you know that my mama was a runner-up for Miss Georgia Chick in 1963?” asked Lula.

“No, sweetheart, I didn't. But I thought you had to be from Georgia to be in a contest like that,” said Sailor.

“She was livin' in Valdosta then, with my Great-Aunt Eudora, Aunt Rootie's mama. You remember Rootie, she's Cousin Dell's mama? Dell went crazy and disappeared a while back? Anyways, this is from the time before she married Daddy, which wasn't until 1968. Every year there's this beauty pageant in Gainesville, Georgia. Used to be, anyhow. And Eudora's dear friend, Addie Mae Audubon? Who was a descendant of the man who invented bird watchin'? She got Mama into it. I got the sterlin' silver bracelet the judges give her in my jewelry box back home. Says on it, ‘Miss Georgia Chick Contest, 1963,' engraved.”

“What'd the winner get?”

“Prob'ly a car or somethin'. Trip to Miami Beach, maybe? When I asked her about it, Mama said she didn't win 'cause her tits wasn't big enough for the one-piece bathin' suit she wore. But she had the best teeth, she said. The girl that won? Mama told me her teeth were almost as big as her tits. I saw a photo of the contest with Miss Georgia Chick holdin' a box of baby roosters. Mama was standin' right beside her.”

“You know what they do with 'em?” asked Sailor.

“With what? The baby roosters?”

“Uh huh. Grind 'em up for fertilizer. Only hens make good fryers.”

Lula made a face. “Oh, Sailor, that's so sad. Killin' all them babies like that.”

“What they do, though,” said Sailor.

“Well, Mama said the place stunk terrible. The whole town of Gainesville. From the chicken business? She never has forgot it. The next year Mama moved back up home.”

Sailor and Lula hadn't gone to sleep yet, though it was almost four o'clock in the morning. They were lying in bed in their room at the Hotel Brazil, holding hands. A blue snake of light from the streetlamp curled in under the window shade and stretched across their bodies.

“Sailor?”

“Honey?”

“Ever imagine what it'd be like to get eaten alive by a wild beast?”

“Mean a tiger?”

“Yeah. Sometimes I think it'd be the biggest thrill?”

Sailor laughed. “It better be, darlin', 'cause it'd be the last.”

“Ripped apart by a gorilla, maybe,” said Lula.

“How about bein' squeezed to death by a python?”

Lula shook her head. “I don't think so. That might be way too slow? And you'd feel your ribs crackin' and insides oozin' out. I'd rather get grabbed sudden and pulled apart quick by a real powerful animal.”

“Lula, sometimes I gotta admit you come up with some weird thoughts.”

“Anythin' interestin' in the world come out of somebody's weird thoughts, Sailor. Couldn't have been no simple soul dreamed up voodoo, for an instance.”

“Voodoo?”

“Sure. How else you explain stickin' pins in dolls to make a person squirm or have a heart attack? Or cookin' someone's fingernail clippin's to make 'em vomit till they ain't got nothin' left inside and drop dead. You tell me, Sailor, who could come up with shit like that ain't super weird?”

“You got me, peanut.”

“You certain?”

“I ain't never met anyone come close to you, sugar.”

Lula rolled over on top of Sailor.

“Take a bite of Lula,” she said.

“He's here,” said Lula. “Johnnie Farragut? I seen him.”

“Where?” asked Sailor.

“Over at the Cafe du Monde. He was sittin' at a table outside, eatin' doughnuts.”

“He see you?”

“I don't think so. I was comin' out of the praline shop across the street? And I spotted him and come right back here to the hotel. I guess this means we'd best scoot, huh, Sailor?”

“I s'pose, sugar. Come sit next to me a minute.”

Lula set her box of pralines on the dresser and sat down on the bed by Sailor.

“We'll be okay, honey. I'll go down do a oil change and we'll hit it.”

“Sailor?”

“Uh huh?”

“Recall the time we was sittin' one night behind the Confederate soldier? Leanin' against it. And you took my hand and put it on your heart and you said, ‘You feel it beatin' in there Lula get used to it 'cause it belongs to you now.' D'you recall that?”

“I do.”

Lula put her head down in Sailor's lap and he stroked her smooth black hair.

“I was hopin' you would. I know that night by heart. Sometimes, honey? I think it's the best night of my life. Really.”

“We didn't do nothin' special I can remember. Just talked, is all.”

“Talkin's good. Long as you got the other? I'm a big believer in talkin', case you ain't noticed.”

“I had a dream while you were gone,” said Sailor. “It's strange, but when I was up at Pee Dee I didn't hardly dream. Maybe a couple or three times, and then nothin' I could remember. About girls, I guess, like ever'body is in.”

“You remember this one?”

“Real clear. It wasn't no fun, Lula. I was in a big city, like New York,
though you know I ain't never been there. It was winter, with ice and snow all over. I was stayin' in some little ol' rathole with my mama. She was real sick and I had to score some medicine for her, only I didn't have no money. But I told her anyway I'd go get the pills she needed. So I was out in the streets and there was about ten million people comin' and goin' in all directions, and it was impossible for me to keep walkin' straight, to get to wherever it was I was goin'. The wind was blowin' super hard and I wasn't dressed warm. Only instead of freezin', I was sweatin', sweatin' strong. The water was rollin' off me. And I was dirty, too, like I hadn't had no bath in a long time, so the sweat was black almost.”

“Boy, sweetie, this is weird okay.”

“I know. I kept walkin', even though I didn't have no money for the medicine or a good idea of where to go. People kept pushin' me and knockin' into me, and they was all dressed up for the cold weather. I guess they figured me for a bum or head case, seein' as how I was so filthy and dressed wrong. Then I thought of you and headed for your house. Only it wasn't your house really, it was in this cold, dark New York City, and it was a long way there.

“I was strugglin' ever' step of the way. Pushin' through the crowds. There was more and more people and the sky seemed like it was daytime, only it was dark, too. You were livin' in some big buildin' and I had to go up lots of stairs, but finally I found where it was. You let me in only you weren't real pleased to see me. You kept sayin', ‘Why'd you come to see me now? Why now?' Like it'd been a long time since we seen each other.”

“Oh, baby, what an idea. I'd always be happy to see you, no matter what.”

“I know, peanut. But it wasn't all like you were so unhappy I was there, just you were upset. My bein' there was upsettin' to you. You had short hair, too, and chopped off in front. You had some kids there, little kids, and I guess you'd got married and your husband was comin' home any minute. I tell you, Lula, I was shakin' wet. All this black sweat was pourin' off me, and I knew I was scarin' you, so I took off. And then I woke up, sweatin', and a couple minutes later you come in.”

Lula slid her head up to Sailor's chest and put her arms around him.

“Sometimes dreams just don't mean nothin'? What I think, anyway.
Stuff come into your mind you don't got no control over, you know? It just come in there and ain't nobody knows for sure why. Like I dreamed once a man stole me and locked me in a room in a tower with one tiny window and there was nothin' but water outside? When I told Mama about it she said it was somethin' I remembered from a story I heard as a child.”

“Well, I ain't upset about it, darlin',” said Sailor. “Just give me a odd feelin' there a minute is all.”

Lula lifted her head and kissed Sailor under his left ear.

“Dreams ain't no odder than real life,” she said. “Sometimes not by half.”

Johnnie Farragut sat on a bench in Jackson Square watching a pair of tourists take photos of one another. The couple spoke a language Johnnie did not recognize. Croatian, maybe, he thought, although he didn't know what Croatian sounded like. The man and woman were short and stout, probably in their thirties, though they looked older. Their clothes hung loosely from their bodies, obviously not having been tailored to order. After several turns each of posing and shooting, which entailed a considerable amount of heated discussion and dramatic gesticulation, the couple left the park.

As they waddled away, arguing in their grumbling language, Johnnie was reminded of a man who had lived down the street from him for a while when he was a boy. The man, whose name Johnnie could not remember, was Polish, and he had two sons, both round-faced, straw-haired kids a few years younger than Johnnie. There was no mother with the family, just a nice old grandmother who spoke only Polish. She and Johnnie would always nod and smile to each other whenever they passed on the street. The father was also round and fat, and he was bald and wore small, wire-rimmed glasses. His kids' faces were always dirty and it seemed as if they were always eating something: apples, cake, candy bars.

The Polish father was building a boat in his yard. Every evening Johnnie heard the man pounding nails into the frame. Many of the neighbors complained about the noise, but the construction continued without respite during the year and a half or so that the Polish family lived there. In his room late at night, Johnnie could hear the hammering and sawing. From what he'd seen of it, Johnnie thought it was to be a sailboat. At about this time, Johnnie remembered, he'd begun to read books at the library such as
Kon-Tiki
and
Clipper Ship Days
. It wasn't until much later that he discovered the novels of Joseph Conrad, who was Polish, and whose real name was Jozef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski, and Herman Melville.

The Polish boat builder stimulated Johnnie's interest in the sea. He wondered where the man intended to sail once he finished his boat.
Johnnie asked the man's sons, but they didn't know. They just shrugged their shoulders, sucked in their pudgy cheeks and blew snot from their dirt-covered noses straight to the ground. Since Johnnie's mother always snarled, “There he goes again,” whenever she heard the hammering, he never discussed it with her.

One early-fall morning Johnnie was passing the Polish family's house and he stopped to look at the boat. It was out in the yard inverted on two homemade horses and was about thirty feet long. The man was planing the sides. He nodded to Johnnie and continued planing. His bald head was covered with sweat and he was humming a fast, foreign-sounding tune.

“Where are you going to sail her?” Johnnie asked him. The man stopped for a moment and stared blankly at Johnnie, as if he hadn't understood the question. Johnnie considered asking him again, but then thought that perhaps the man did not speak English very well, so he waited. Finally the man shrugged, gave a vague grunt, shoved his small pair of glasses up the bridge of his short, fat nose, they slid back down again, and he continued to plane. Johnnie watched him for a few minutes and then walked away.

The following spring the Polish family left town. The boat was moved on a flatbed truck, strapped down with heavy rope. The man and his two sons and the grandmother drove away in a car behind the truck. Johnnie couldn't remember who was driving the truck, but he recalled that when he went into his house and told his mother that the boat and the Polish family were gone, his mother said, “Thank Jesus, we won't have to listen to that awful poundin' no more.”

Outside Baton Rouge, Sailor said to Lula, “Sweetheart, keep your panties up. We're in Jimmy Swaggart country.”

Lula giggled. “Jimmy's just another of them cheapskate preachers? Wantin' somethin' for nothin', is how I see it.”

“At Pee Dee I heard about a guy named Top Hat Robichaux lives around here. Real name's Clarence, I think, but he's from the town of Top Hat, which is just north a ways, so that's what they called him.”

“What's he do?”

“Used to be a safecracker. Now he's got his own country church up in Top Hat, Louisiana. He started it at Pee Dee, called the Holy Roller Rebel Raiders.”

“Sounds like a football team,” said Lula. “
Two
football teams.”

Sailor and Lula both laughed. They were buzzing west on Interstate 10 in the Bonneville with the top down. Sailor kept on right past the capital city but slowed to a stop a mile or so beyond the western boundary to pick up a hitchhiker.

“Sure you want to do this?” asked Lula. “Might be a way they could track us.”

“He's just a kid, honey. Look at him.”

The hitchhiker was a boy of about fifteen or sixteen with a pack on his back, and he was carrying a large, covered cardboard box that he placed gently on the back seat next to him. His face was covered with freckles and acne. There wasn't a clear spot on it other than the whites of his eyes, which were a washed-out blue. His long brown hair was straggly, uncombed, and looked as if it hadn't been shampooed for weeks, if not months. He wore an old green army field jacket with the name MENDOZA sewn in capital letters on a white strip above the left breast pocket. The boy had an uneven smile on his face that exposed his jagged, yellow teeth.