“The operation was performed and several months later, after, as you say, the kinks had been worked out and he was completely healed, the producer made a rendezvous with Brenda du Sossé.”
“Did he produce?” asked Lula. “Sorry, I just had to say it.”
“He did,” said Abidjan, “but Brenda du Sossé, impressed as she must have been, insisted on measuring his member. She got down on her knees and did so. According to the tape, Cazzissimo's member in full erection cameâno pun intendedâto precisely eight and five-eighths inches, and she declared it insufficient for her purposes.
Quel dommage
, almost but not quite. Enraged by her rejection and seized by uncontrollable desire, Federico Cazzissimo forcibly introduced his cadaver-derived organ into Brenda du Sossé's mouth.”
“And she bit it off!” Beany exclaimed.
Doncovay Abidjan nodded, and said, “Only the engorged head. He was flown as soon as possible in his private jet, with the may I say, decapitated part packed in ice, from Paris, where he and Brenda du Sossé had had their rendezvous, to the mountainside clinic in Austria, so that the surgeon could reattach it.”
“Could he?” Lula asked. She felt like she had as a little girl listening to
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
on the radio.
“Evidently, yes,” said Abidjan, “but in any case that was the dénouement of Cazzissimo's quest for the favors of Brenda du Sossé. One year later, he married a Sicilian barmaid.”
“Did they have children?” asked Lula.
“This is the best part,” said Marnie.
“Five,” said Abidjan.
“No!” gasped Beany.
“Oui,” Abidjan said, “but four were by artificial insemination.”
“And the other one?” Beany asked.
“Who knows?”
“You ladies are gonna love this,” said Marnie, as she got up and headed for the kitchen. “I got us some mighty tasty boudin sausages for supper.”
35
Lula and Marnie were sitting in Marnie's kitchen having their morning coffee and Marnie had just lit up her first American Spirit of the day when they heard Beany shout in the front room. Lula got up and went in and saw her friend hang up the telephone. There was no phone in their apartment and they had come to Marnie's, at her invitation, so that Beany could call Hedy Lamarr.
“It's Melton,” said Beany, “he went postal.”
Marnie came in, carrying her cup and cigarette.
“Can you spare me one of them?” Beany asked.
Marnie handed her cigarette to Beany, who accepted it and took a big drag.
“What's up?” asked Marnie.
Beany puffed away. Her eyes were full of tears that refused to fall or that she refused to allow to fall. Lula had seen her this way before, “caught between brawlin' and bawlin',” as Beany described herself when in this state.
“Somethin' happened to her grandson, Melton,” Lula told Marnie.
“Not âto,' ” said Beany, “it's what he done.”
Beany inhaled on Marnie's American Spirit until it was almost down to the filter. Lula and Marnie waited and watched her smoke.
“He murdered Delivery,” Beany said. “Shot his own daddy with a deer rifle.”
“Hell's bells!” Lula cried. “You talk to Hedy?”
“Even a child is known by his doings,” said Marnie, “whether his work be pure, and whether it be right.”
Beany handed what was left of the cigarette back to Marnie and said, “Hedy Lamarr says Delivery was eatin' his breakfast as usual, four eggs sunnyside up, six pieces of Canadian Bacon, and five slices of raisin walnut toast, when Melton just come marchin' out of his room bare naked, carryin' the gun. Hedy Lamarr was standin' by the stove, she says. Delivery didn't even know his son had come in until he touched the barrel end against the back of his daddy's head and pulled
the trigger. Delivery's brains spewed out onto his plate, turned the eggs red.”
“He didn't shoot at Hedy, did he?” asked Lula.
Beany shook her head. “Melton turned right around and walked back calmly to his bedroom and closed the door. The police just come and taken him into custody. Hedy Lamarr says he didn't give 'em no trouble. Had guns drawn and bulletproof vests on like it was Scarface they was after.”
“He say anything to them?”
“Not to the cops, to his mama. As he was bein' hauled away, he said, âAs long as he is a child differeth nothin' from a servant, though he be lord of all.' ”
Marnie walked out of the room. Lula went over and sat down next to Beany and held her close. Marnie came back with two more cigarettes, put both between her lips, lit them, and handed one to Beany.
“I guess we'll be movin' on to Plain Dealin' sooner than expected,” Lula said to Marnie. “I'm sure Hedy Lamarr's in dire need of her mama.”
“He never forgave his father for bein' a midget,” said Beany. “For makin' a son who was a midget, too.”
Marnie looked out the front window at the sky. Fast moving clouds headed toward the Gulf of Mexico.
“We're in for some weather,” she said.
36
“Really, Lula, you don't have to cut short your visit. You ain't hardly had no time with Pace.”
“I'm comin', don't argue. Pace understands, he promised he'll visit real soon. I won't let you face this mess without me.”
Lula and Beany had said their goodbyes to Marnie and Pace and were sitting in Lula's Mercury Nightcat, Lula at the wheel.
“Don't think I don't appreciate it,” Beany said. “If I could love you any more for it than I already do, I would. I'm sure Hedy Lamarr'll want you there. Spike Jones and Tizane Naureen drove on up together last night.”
Lula started the car, made certain nobody was coming and pulled out of her parking space.
“What about Elmo?”
“Tizane Naureen called the nursin' home in Ferriday, but you know he's been gaga for the last few years. Nurse there said she'd tell him but doubted he'd understand.”
“Why's he in Ferriday, anyway? Isn't that where Jerry Lee Lewis is from?”
“Yes, it is, birthplace of The Killer himself, though I believe he's lived over in Hernando, Miss'ippi, for decades. Elmo's last wife, Nefertiti Larto, was from near there. She passed last year. They'd been livin' in Sicily Island until Elmo got the Alzheimer's so fierce nobody could handle him at home.”
“Life just don't quit, Miss Thorn, does it?”
“You quit life, it don't quit you, is how I see it. By the way, Spike Jones says it'll be his pleasure to carry you back to Bay St. Clement, so don't worry none on that score.”
“I ain't been worryin', but thanks. How's Hedy Lamarr doin' today?”
“Holdin' steady at the moment, far's I can tell. Nothin' to be done about her husband, he's gone, so her concern's for the boy. Says their lawyer thinks there won't be no trial, just a hearin' to determine Melton's mental condition. Lawyer believes he'll be declared a deranged individual and spend the rest of his days in the bin. It ain't no fun, I know, 'cause I
been more'n once, but better that than Angola. Hard cases in there'd be usin' his bones for toothpicks.”
They had decided to take the interstate out of N.O. to Baton Rouge, then the 190 to highway 71, which would take them almost all the way to Plain Dealing. The last stretch, from Bossier City north on highway 3, Beany said, was no more than twenty miles.
Lula reached for the radio, then asked, “You mind?”
“ 'Course not, baby.”
Lula cut on the dial and there was old Jimmy Reed again, singing one of Sailor's favorite tunes, “Blue, Blue Water.”
“You know I never loved before,” he crooned, “and I don't want to love no more.”
Lula turned to tell Beany “My feelings exactly,” but her friend had fallen asleep as soon as they had turned off Elysian Fields onto the 10.
“Blue, blue water, silver moon, tell me, darlin', tell me soon,” Lula sang along softly. Then she stopped singing and just listened as she drove.
37
Every time I been in Baton Rouge I recall Sailor telling me about how when he was a boy his daddy would take him to visit his grandmama and theyd spend a Sunday afternoon riding the old paddlewheeled ferryboats on the Mississippi River back and forth for hours between Baton Rouge and Port Allen eating Crackerjacks and drinking Delaware Punch. Also his daddy took him to look at the bullet holes still in the Capitol walls where the famous governor of Louisiana Huey P. Long was assassinated. He said Huey was a hero of his daddys and that if he had lived he might could have been president of the USA and changed things for the ordinary working man much better but Huey was shot down in cold blood and nobody would ever know. Beany and I have stopped at the Inn of Evangeline in Ville Platte for the night its Cajun country the people are always informal but polite which I like. Beany been more quiet than normal not talking a mile a minute the way she does. This business has hit her hard like a thief in the night snuck in and taken away her energy. All day driving I done my best to make conversation but Beanys down in the rock bottoms. We ordered in to the room from a chop suey joint rice and sweet and sour pork and snow peas but Beany only picked at it she never was too eager a eater anyway. One of the coins I got in change for the Chinese was a Indian head nickel with a buffalo on the tails side. I told Beany I had not seen one of these in so many years. When I was girl in grade school they were pretty common but by the time I was in high school they was becoming rare and I wrote a report about how it was the Indian head nickel came to be I still remember some of it. I always have thought the Indian face was very sad had hard crease lines in the right cheek and forehead it is his profile of course with only a couple of feathers not a full head dress. This coin was ordered to be made by President Teddy Roosevelt the Rough Rider he was called and the government produced them for 25 years from 1913 to 1938. This one I have is from 1937. The artist who drew it was James Earle Fraser he modeled it after three Indian chiefs they were Iron Tail a Oglala Sioux who fought beside Sitting Bull beat the pants off Custer and the 7th Cavalry
at Little Big Horn and Two Moons he was a Cheyenne also was at Little Big Horn and Big Tree who was a Seneca the most famous of the three he became a movie actor his real name was Isaac Johnny John. The only movies I recall now are Drums along the Mohawk and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon the first with Henry Fonda the second with John Duke Wayne in the one with John Wayne Big Trees name was Chief Pony That Walks I always liked that name. Its wild I still can remember writing about the nickel must be 65 years ago and also the buffalo used by the artist was from the Bronx Zoo in New York and its name was Black Diamond. Looking at the Indian face now he still seems sad as hell I imagine because his land and ways of life was destroyed by the coming of the white man and the black man too. In North Carolina there is the legend of the Trail of Tears with the Cherokees Johnny Cash played one in a TV movie about it. I always have thought the Indian tribes of the Great West were the most beautiful their blankets and clothes and body decorations riding paint ponies galloping into the sundown. The white man certainly did not do them no favors did they. Im going to keep this nickel and never spend it so I can look at his sad but beautiful face whenever I want to for the rest of my life it reminds me of the girl who I was when I wrote about him.
38
“Don't believe I ever told you about this, Lula, but one time I was in Shreveport, actually stayin' over in Dixie Gardens, guess it was, Elmo Pleasant had a bit of business there, prob'ly buyin' or sellin' stolen property of some kind, as usual, and I run into a gal from Mer Rouge, over by Bastrop, name of Vahida Doblez.”
“Sounds like a Mexican movie star.”
Beany had awakened in better spirits and insisted on driving. They had just bypassed Alexandria and Beany had been chattering practically nonstop since breakfast.
“Her daddy hailed from around Nacimiento, Mexico, she told me, part black, part Indian, and her mama was white, from El Paso, if I recall correctly. Anyway, Vahida was a real knockout, long black hair, big dark brown eyes, fabulous figure. We was both in our early thirties then. Vahida had a bad problem, though.”
“Who don't?”
“She didn't have full control of her faculties. Used to she'd pass out at the drop of a hat, any time, any place. Boom! One second she'd be standin' and carryin' on normal, next she's in a heap like a pile of rags.”
“What was it? Epilepsy?”
“No, just faintin' spells. Doctors couldn't figure out why she had 'em. Sometimes she'd wake up and not know who or where she was.”
“Amnesia.”
“Said her mem'ry'd disappear for hours, even days.”
“How'd you meet her?”
“We was stayin' at the same motel, hangin' out by the pool with our kids. She had one, I already had Hedy Lamarr. Her old man was in plumbin' parts. Vahida and I hit it off and we went together one evenin' into Shreveport, left the children with their daddies. Had us a few cocktails in a nice restaurant, sittin' at the bar makin' girl talk, when a couple swingin' dicks in suits begin hittin' on us, 'specially on Vahida. I was polite and all but didn't need no more company, made that clear. Vahida Doblez, though, didn't mind the attention at all. She had on a tightfittin',
strapless, tangerine-colored dress didn't leave a whole lot to any man's imagination. Recall I tried to get her to leave but Vahida let the men buy us another round or two. She drank Maker's Mark, on the rocks, nothin' fancy. I knew if we kept on we'd be cruisin' for a bruisin' but Vahida was drivin'. Only way out of it for me was to take a cab. I didn't want to leave her there with those two guys. Said they was pharmaceutical salesmen from Wichita, someplace like that. I'd told Elmo we wouldn't be late and Vahida said for me to go on, she'd be along soon.”