Sailor & Lula (71 page)

“Don't tell me. You left her and she passed out.”

Beany nodded. “That's what Vahida said two days later when the New Orleans police contacted her husband, whose name I forget. He and their little boy were still at the motel, tryin' to find out what happened to her.”

It started to rain again, so the women rolled up the windows and Lula turned on the air-conditioning.

“Them big black cumulo-nimbus clouds're guardin' heaven's gate like Nubian eunuchs blockin' the door to Cleopatra's boudoir,” said Beany.

“What did happen?” Lula asked.

“Manager of the Monteleone Hotel called the cops when a maid found Vahida unconscious and naked in a bathtub half-filled with dirty water. She didn't remember nothin', of course, once the hotel doctor revived her. Vahida's purse and clothes was there but no men. Night clerk said she'd come in with a man who'd apparently given a false name and address and paid for the room with cash in advance. Her car was found right where we'd left it, in the parking lot of the restaurant in Shreveport.

“How'd you find out?”

“Had her home number in Mer Rouge. Got hold of her husband there about a week later. He had the red-ass at me for abandonin' Vahida, as he called it, but turned out she was unharmed, except for the tattoo.”

“Now there's a detail,” said Lula. “Vahida's husband tell you this?”

“No, she did when I spoke to her the day after I talked to him.”

“What was it?”

“Three letters: A, G, and M, inside a heart.”

“Man's initials, prob'ly.”

“Most likely, but it weren't the tattoo so much upset her husband, it was the location.”

There was a thunderclap, then Beany said, “It was smack on Vahida's butt.”

Lula clucked her tongue. “How much longer their marriage last?”

“Don't know, never spoke to Vahida Doblez again. She said she'd call back but she didn't, so I let it be.”

“Couldn'ta been a happy husband havin' to look at another man's initials on his wife's ass every night.”

“A stranger's at that.”

Rain came down harder and Beany switched the wipers to high.

“Stop up at the next exit, Beany, will you? Water streamin' down like this always makes me want to pee.”

Tizane Naureen and Spike Jones are real good kids they been regular to see Melton in the hoosegow and the situation pretty much seems to be as Beany been told looks like a verdict of insane will keep Melton in a institution for the criminal insane the duration of his days. Hedy Lamarr wont never be entirely all right again I dont guess but she and Beany is close now its a big help they werent always on such good terms. I was sorry to have to leave Pace so sudden but Beany needed me and there werent no question about it. Maybe instead of going straight to Bay St. Clement Ill ask Spike Jones to accompany me back to NO or Ill tell Pace to come visit here so he wont have to make a long trip to North Carolina and take more time away from his construction work. I been thinking on this business of fathers and sons and why Melton felt he needed to murder his own daddy. Beany says when she visited Melton at the jail he was real calm and didnt seem sad or happy just peaceful. I asked Hedy Lamarr if her boy been drugged stupid to keep him under control and she said she didnt think so as he had not given the authorities any trouble at all since they took him away. Pace and Sailor always got along good even when Pace got into trouble I think because Sail himself had hard times coming up and then later of course so he tried to keep things together for our family and he did he took care of us. Sailor and Pace never known I found out about the time Pace hooked up with them two nasty Rattler brothers when he was sixteen and got involved in a robbery and then those boys were killed over in Mississippi and Sailor had to rescue his son while I was away in Rock Hill with the church of the three Rs when Reverend Goodin Plenty was shot to death in front of my eyes. I never have said a word to Pace in all this time and wont ever and not to Sail while he was alive that was their trial by fire not mine. As John says the father loveth the son and hath given all things into his hand. I know how very much Sailor loved Pace and did his best to keep him right. Despite its terrible what Melton done to his daddy the pain of the son hath delivered Delivery from the burden of Babylon. I remember when I was nine or ten years old hearing about a orphanage fire in a big
city up north where the children were crowded on the stairs trying to get out of the building when the staircase collapsed and all of the children were crushed and burnt up. The staircase made of cement was not strong enough to support the weight of those kids it was supposed to be but wasnt built properly the construction company had cheated on the grade of cement or something to save money the result being those orphans were killed. I thought how lucky I was to not be an orphan have to get trapped in a fire like that. Jesus said suffer little children and forbid them not to come unto me for such is the kingdom of heaven. What about a forever boy like Melton not right in his brain what happens to him? I am ready for an answer why theres endless madness and suffering on the planet all I know is everything been out of control from the beginning.

Beany and Hedy Lamarr were on their way back to the house after visiting Melton when Hedy's cell phone rang. She was driving but took the call anyway.

“Hedy Lamarr here. Oh, hi, Spike, we're just now startin' home. What? That can't be! Oh, Lord, give us strength. Of course, Mama and I'll head there right now.”

Hedy Lamarr ended the call and moved her Durango over into the far right lane, then turned right onto Confederate Highway.

“What're you doin', darlin'?” asked Beany. “You need to make a stop?”

“Yes, Mama. I got to tell you this, so be calm, okay?”

“Now that you got me nervous, I'll do my best. What is it?”

“Lula's in the hospital. She's breathin' but won't wake up. Tizane Naureen and Spike Jones are with her at Marshall Clements Memorial. We'll be there in ten minutes.”

Beany sat perfectly still and stared straight ahead. She did not want to believe what her daughter had just told her. Beany wanted to go back in time fifty-seven seconds to before Spike Jones had called his mother. The thought of Lula passing away was not one for which Beany was prepared.

“Kids say doctor told 'em it's possible Lula had a stroke while she was nappin', now she's in a coma.”

“Anybody call Pace?”

“I don't know, Mama. We can do it from Marshall Clements.”

The image of Lula Pace Fortune at twenty popped into Beany's head. The night before Sailor Ripley was released from prison for killing Bob Ray Lemon, she and Lula had gone to the Raindrop Club in Cape Fear to talk and try to soothe Lula's nerves; Lula did not know what to expect when she picked up Sailor the next morning at Pee Dee. Lula had long, wavy, black hair then, and her big gray eyes made a person staring into them think of a midsummer's day sky just before rain. Now those cool, late afternoon eyes were closed, possibly for keeps, and the thought gave Beany the shivers.

Hedy Lamarr said, “Spike Jones told me his shrink, Ramar Rabinowitz, who's half-Jew and half-Pakistani, says Tibetans believe if a sick or hurt person lives or dies, it don't matter, they're both good.”

A gigantic bug banged against the windshield, leaving a greenish-yellow squish mark directly in Beany's line of vision, but neither she nor Hedy Lamarr said another word until they arrived at the hospital.

Sailor took Lula's hand in his.

“Thanks for waitin', Sail,” Lula said.

“Peanut,” said Sailor, “don't give it another thought.”

CODA

Dear Pace,

As upsetting as it is we got no choice but to accept the fact of your Mamas passing. I am not certain she is in a better place this is only my thought not based on nothing but face it there aint nothing can be proved even by science concerning an afterlife. I heard today on the radio that astronomers have dug up a old idea of Albert Einsteins called dark energy they now believe might be true after all even though Einstein had decided it was his biggest mistake. This is a force in space he figured was a ugly form of gravity he named a cosmological constant to explain a balance between the expansion of the universe and how certain stars are yanking on everything causing all there is around us to expand and dark energy is this invisible force. Believe it or not Pace I always was interested in this type of thinking as I never have believed in God creating it all. I mean there has to be a better answer thats too easy as is the big bang. Lula was my dearest friend more than a sister for almost all our lives and I considered her a powerful force of love which is the biggest mystery after all how she could keep on the way she did being good and thoughtful of others without getting fooled too much. Now the dark energy come pulled her away from us and I dont mean Satan who is only an excuse exists in stupid peoples minds. Lulas soul is swirling in space part of the expansion of the universe which is bigger for her having been and being.

Love you,

Beany

It is . . . a prayer for the wild at heart.

—Tennessee Williams

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Barry Gifford's fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have been published in twenty-eight languages. His novel
Night People
was awarded the Premio Brancati, established in Italy by Pier Paolo Pasolini and Alberto Moravia, and he has been the recipient of awards from PEN, the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Library Association, the Writers Guild of America, and the Christopher Isherwood Foundation. His books
Sailor's Holiday
and
The Phantom Father
were each named Notable Book of the Year by the
New York Times
, and his book
Wyoming
was named a Novel of the Year by the
Los Angeles Times
. He has also written librettos for operas by the composers Tōru Takemitsu, Ichiro Nodaira, and Olga Neuwirth. Gifford's work has appeared in many publications, including
The New Yorker
,
Punch
,
Esquire
,
La Nouvelle Revue Française
,
El País
,
La Repubblica
,
Rolling Stone
,
Brick
,
Film Comment
,
Projections
, and the
New York Times
. His film credits include
Wild at Heart
,
Perdita Durango
,
Lost Highway
,
City of Ghosts
, and
The Phantom Father
. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. For more information, visit
www.BarryGifford.com
.

ABOUT SEVEN STORIES PRESS

Seven Stories Press is an independent book publisher based in New York City, with distribution throughout the United States, Canada, England, and Australia. We publish works of the imagination by such writers as Nelson Algren, Russell Banks, Octavia E. Butler, Ani DiFranco, Assia Djebar, Ariel Dorfman, Coco Fusco, Barry Gifford, Hwang Sok-yong, Lee Stringer, and Kurt Vonnegut, to name a few, together with political titles by voices of conscience, including the Boston Women's Health Collective, Noam Chomsky, Angela Y. Davis, Human Rights Watch, Derrick Jensen, Ralph Nader, Loretta Napoleoni, Gary Null, Project Censored, Barbara Seaman, Alice Walker, Gary Webb, and Howard Zinn, among many others. Seven Stories Press believes publishers have a special responsibility to defend free speech and human rights, and to celebrate the gifts of the human imagination, wherever we can. For additional information, visit
www.sevenstories.com
.

Copyright © 2010 by Barry Gifford

 

Wild at Heart
© 1990 by Barry Gifford

Perdita Durango
© 1991, 1992 by Barry Gifford
The Wild Life of Sailor and Lula
(containing
Sailor's Holiday
,
Sultans of Africa
,
Consuelo's Kiss
, and
Bad Day for the Leopard Man
) © 1991, 1992 by Barry Gifford.
The Imagination of the Heart
© 2009 by Barry Gifford

 

Perdita Durango
first published in 1992 by Vintage Books as “59° and Raining: The Story of Perdita Durango” in
Sailor's Holiday
, which was originally published in somewhat different form by Random House, Inc., New York, in 1991. First Grove Press edition published in 1996.

 

 

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc., for permission to reprint excerpts from
Empire of Signs
by Roland Barthes. Translation © 1982 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc.

 

The Imagination of the Heart
first published in 2009 by Seven Stories Press, New York.

 

 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including mechanical, electric, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

 

Seven Stories Press
140 Watts Street
New York, NY 10013
www.sevenstories.com

 

In Canada: Publishers Group Canada, 559 College Street, Suite 402, Toronto, ON M6G 1A9

 

In the UK: Turnaround Publisher Services Ltd., Unit 3, Olympia Trading Estate, Coburg Road, Wood Green, London N22 6TZ

 

In Australia: Palgrave Macmillan, 15-19 Claremont Street, South Yarra, VIC 3141

 

College professors may order examination copies of Seven Stories Press titles for a free six-month trial period. To order, visit
http://www.sevenstories.com/textbook
or send a fax on school letterhead to (212) 226-1411.