The Up-Down (7 page)

 

 

20

“I hid out in a cheap motel, Moke's, on Reno Street near the C-stock track where the kids I hung out with in high school would go to rent a room for seven bucks and get loaded. I was there for a week, then drove down to Savannah to bunk with an old beau of mine named Travis Chavis, who's turned gay now. His daddy owned the Kickin' Chicken chain of restaurants. Travis inherited a ton of money when he turned twenty-one and bought himself a mansion in the best part of town. Lives with his boyfriend, a black man named Devondre Williams-Williams used to be a star runnin' back at Georgia Tech until he got thrown off the team for detrimental behavior—Devondre told me he wore dresses and women's undergarments in the locker room—and lost his scholarship. Travis paid for his plastic surgery so now Devondre looks kind of like Katharine Hepburn with the physique of Arnold Schwarzenegger. He quit takin' steroids, though, 'cause they shrunk his private parts. Anyway, I didn't have any available cash so Travis took me in and then gave me a bunch when I decided to leave Savannah. I don't much like that town—they don't let dogs or even people walk on the grass in the parks there.”

Punzy and Pace were sitting in facing armchairs in his cottage, drinking rum and Cokes. Pace wasn't sure what he should do about her; he was still attracted to Punzy but he knew she was forty miles of bad road. His weakness disgusted him and while she talked he was working up the nerve to send her on her way.

“When I was stayin' at Travis's, though, I thought deep and hard about how careless and foolish I've been with my one and only life. Devondre helped me out there, describin' his own self and discoverin' he couldn't handle goin' through the remainder of his time on earth without bein' the person he knew he really was. Of course I'd thought about this before, which is why I decided to become a nurse. I'm thinkin' I should go to Africa and help rid Sudanese or Congolese kids of all the diseases they got.

“Bitsy's and my daddy, Purvis Pasternak, was an evil man. I don't know if Bitsy told you about him. He owned a gun store in Charlotte where all the Klansmen, if there still is a Klan, hung out. When our mother, Martita Hunter, who was from Mississippi originally, died, I was eleven. Bitsy was just out of college. Daddy began molestin' me then, after Bitsy was gone to graduate school in Chapel Hill. She was so smart the colleges all paid to have her. Daddy told me it was what God intended, to keep the comminglin' of the sexes, as he called it, in the family. I guess he never done nothin' with Bitsy because Mama was still alive. When my sister'd come home for the holidays, he'd leave off foolin' with me until she'd go back to school. I got pregnant when I was thirteen so Daddy sent me to stay in a home for unwed mothers in St. Louis, The Saviors of All the King's Daughters it was called. When Bitsy came to see me there I told her it was our daddy who'd made me with child and she swore she'd never again go back to his house, and she never did. I had the baby, not knowin' if it was a girl or a boy, I didn't want to, and let The Saviors give it to an adoption agency, which they got paid for and didn't give me nothin' of it. I went back to Charlotte and when Daddy made a move to resume carryin' on with me I refused and told him I'd kill him in his sleep if he laid a hand on me. He kept away after that and done his business with black prostitutes he'd bring home late at night.

“I finished high school, where I got a reputation as a bad girl. In fact, I slept with boys, men and women, too, whoever wanted me. I didn't mind, so long as it wasn't Daddy. He got knifed by one of his whores and lost a kidney when I was in my last year. He didn't get no sympathy from me, and followin' graduation I went to junior college in Tallahassee, Florida, where Bitsy was livin'; that's where she met Del Parker. I guess I got bored there and took off with a stupid boy from New Orleans named Tosco Orchid to Mexico. He got sick in Mexico City and almost died from typhoid fever or somethin', so soon as he was recovered enough to travel again he went back to N.O. I stayed and got tangled up with Abstemio, whom I met while I was workin' illegally as a dance hostess in Tepito. He spent a lot of money on me and we got drunker than usual one night and I married him. You about know the rest.”

“You can't stay here,” Pace said. “I need to be by myself and finish the book I'm writing. Company won't cut it.”

Punzy put her drink down on a side table, stood up so that he could appreciate her nifty figure, then stepped over to Pace and leaned down so that their noses almost touched.

“Tell me true you don't want to play Two-Cobras-in-a-Bag with me,” she said.

Pace gently pushed Punzy away, rose from his chair and opened the front door.

“Please go, Punzy,” he said. “I don't want to be mean, I just have to figure things out and I won't be able to if you're here.”

Punzy dropped to her knees and began sobbing. Pace watched and listened to her heave and cry until he couldn't stand it any more and closed the door.

She looked up at Pace, smiled weakly and said, “I'll let my hair grow long again if you want me to.”

 

 

21

Rapunzelina did her best to not be too much of a distraction to Pace. She went to the library in Bay St. Clement and did the proper research regarding gaining admission to nursing schools and very soon began sending out applications. When she wasn't at the library or running errands, such as buying groceries, Punzy spent most of her daytime hours in Dalceda's house, which is where she and Pace regularly had dinner. At night they slept together in the cottage. Pace's writing was going well and he was pleasantly surprised by Punzy's understanding of his need for privacy. Pace enjoyed their time together and, despite the sadness caused by the death of her sister, Punzy seemed genuinely happy.

Then one evening six months after her return, she did not show up back at the house and did not call. Pace fixed his own supper and afterwards went back to the cottage and read until he fell asleep. It was after two in the morning when Pace was awakened by loud noises coming from Dalceda's house. He looked out his bedroom window and saw the Subaru and a red Dodge Ram pick-up parked in the driveway. Lights were on in the big house and terrible techno music was blasting from it. Pace got up, put on his pants and shoes and went over to find out what was going on.

He found Punzy and two bearded, middle-aged men snorting lines of cocaine off a counter in the kitchen. One of the men had a patch over his left eye and was naked from the waist down. The other man was completely naked and was swigging from a fifth of Jack Daniel's in between inhaling coke through a rolled up twenty dollar bill. Punzy was fully dressed. Her eyes were only half open and she staggered over to a chair and passed out with her head on the table.

“Who're you?” shouted the man with an eyepatch when he noticed Pace. Before Pace could say anything, the other man began urinating on the floor. Pace took off and ran back to the cottage, grabbed his Remington .332 over-and-under shotgun and two shells from the bedroom closet, loaded the gun and walked quickly back to the house.

The two men were still in the kitchen. The one with the eyepatch was shaking Punzy by her right shoulder, trying to get her to wake up. His cock was at half-mast and he was yelling.

“Come on, honey gal, suck Porter's hairy old dick again!”

Pace leveled the shotgun at him and said, “Get out.”

The other man threw his whisky bottle at Pace. It missed and Pace turned the .332 a few degrees and shot him in the groin. The man screamed and fell down.

“Take him and get out!” Pace shouted at Eyepatch, pointing the gun again at him.

Eyepatch lifted up his partner, who was howling and writhing in pain while bleeding copiously onto the floor, and dragged the wounded man out the back door. Pace stood in the doorway and watched as Eyepatch dumped him in the bed of the truck, then got behind the steering wheel and drove away.

The men's clothes were scattered around the kitchen. Pace walked into the dining room and fired the other shell into Punzy's Bose, blowing it apart and off the table they had become used to having dinner on, then went back into the kitchen. Punzy had slid off her chair onto the floor, where her head rested in a pool of the wounded man's blood.

Pace sat down in the chair in which Rapunzelina had been sitting and placed the shotgun on the table. It was quiet now in the kitchen except for the gurgling sound of Punzy's troubled breathing. Words from the Fourth Circle of Dante's
Inferno
came to his mind and he spoke them:

“Not without cause our journey is to the pit.”

Pace did not move for a very long time. He looked down again at Punzy and wondered what would become of her. Her breathing feathered out and she slept now like a child. Pace looked up and imagined Sailor was sitting across the table from him, smiling.

“Well, Daddy,” Pace said. “I've got my answer now. You had Mama's everlasting arm to lean on and I don't. That was your secret, wasn't it? Havin' Lula there for you made it possible to go on.”

Pace knew what he wanted to write now. He got up and walked back to the cottage.

 

 

Part Four

 

 

1

The one person Pace could think of that he wanted to see and whom he believed would understand his state of mind following the bizarre and highly unsettling events of the past few months was Marnie Kowalski. Marnie lived in New Orleans, and during his first few weeks back in the city in which he'd grown up, after his divorce from Rhoda Gombowicz, Pace and Marnie had been lovers; but their mutual saving grace was that they had become good friends into the bargain and remained close despite the waning of their short-lived romantic entanglement. Pace trusted Marnie and he knew she trusted him, so it was to Marnie Pace turned in his most recent of darkest hours.

“Pace, it's so good to hear your voice. I'm glad you're callin' 'cause I've thought of you often since you moved to North Carolina. How're things, darlin'?”

“Marnie, you know I've seen and gone through some more than passin' strange episodes in my life but lately there've been several goin's on have about got me puzzled as to God's plan.”

Marnie laughed and said, “Pace, honey, you of all people know He ain't never had one. Don't give me any details 'til you get here. You are comin' to see me, aren't you? Isn't that why you're callin' now? Not that you'd ever have to phone first, you know.”

“Thanks, Marnie, yes. It's good you're still so prescient about most things. I'd like to get back to N.O. for a little while and I was hopin' you'd be up for takin' me in. If anything, Bay St. Clement ain't turned out to be any more peaceful than anywhere else. I'm writin', though, and that seems to be pretty much holdin' my mind together. What about you?”

“I opened a bakery over on St. Philip. Goin' pretty good so far. I call it Kowalski's Cake & Pie Company. Open from five A.M. 'til two P.M.; then I go swimmin' at the Y. What're you writin'?”

“The story of Sailor and Lula; it's a novel.”

“Can't wait to read it, babe. When you comin'?”

“It'll take me a couple of days to close up the houses and pay some bills. I'll drive over once that's done. Now you got me thinkin' about your lemon meringue pie. Nobody in N.O. besides you could ever get it to come out right.”

“People don't understand the weather here like I do, that's why. It's the weather affects the bakin'. Well, this is Sunday, so I'll be expectin' you around Thursday. If I'm not at the house I'll probably be at the bakery, corner of St. Philip and Burgundy.”

“Thanks, Marnie. You know I love you to death.”

“Love you to death, too, Pace. Drive careful.”

Pace hung up. The last time he'd seen her, Marnie was living with two rescued and supposedly rehabilitated pit bulls she'd named Milk and Honey. She had a boyfriend, too, an ex-Navy Seal—Bigger or Digger, Marnie called him, Pace couldn't remember. He wondered if that guy was still around. Marnie hadn't mentioned him.

Pace was not entirely certain that he should be leaving at all, but he did feel the need to create some distance for himself from the killings and reprehensible behavior of Rapunzelina Pasternak Cruz. Where she had gone Pace did not know and did not want to know. Perhaps she would make it to the Congo one of these days and do some good for mankind like she hoped, though Pace had his doubts.

The night before he left for N.O., Rapunzelina appeared to Pace in a dream. She was naked, adorned only by numerous bracelets on each arm, rings on every one of her fingers and indecipherable tattoos on her breasts. Punzy extended her arms toward him, turned upward the palms of her hands and said, “Do not forgive me. The river is mine and I have made it.”

 

 

2

Driving to New Orleans, Pace realized that the route he was following from Bay St. Clement was the same one his mother and her lifelong best friend, Beany, had taken on the last trip of Lula's life. At the age of eighty she had gone on the road to visit Pace, which she had, and stayed with Beany at Marnie Kowalski's house on Orleans Street. All had gone relatively well until a dilemma in Beany's family caused the women to cut short their time with Pace. It was on their way to Beany's daughter's home in Plain Dealing, Louisiana, that Lula suffered a heart attack and died.

Lula and Beany had encountered a spot of trouble in South Carolina after a young man they had given a ride to was stabbed to death by a disturbed woman he met during a stopover. Both Lula and Beany had been unnerved by this incident but Pace did not think it had anything to do with his mother's subsequent passing. Lula had experienced many worse situations in her lifetime and managed to weather them all. Her heart, strong and wild as it was, had finally just quit. Pace missed his parents but was satisfied that they had lived their lives as best they could and passed on to him their spirit of adventure, decency and generosity. As far as legacies go, Pace figured, that was about as good as one could get.

By the time Pace arrived at Marnie's late Thursday afternoon, he was exhausted both mentally and physically. He had stopped on the way only to sleep, eat and get gas, keeping conversation with anyone, such as the motel clerk, waitress or station attendant to a minimum. As soon as he had parked his Pathfinder on Orleans Street, two houses down from Marnie's, Pace fell asleep in the driver's seat and did not wake up until Ms. Kowalski herself knocked on the front passenger side window.

“Pace Ripley! Here I am, darlin', the one you can't live without.”

Pace opened his eyes and saw his old friend standing on the sidewalk grinning at him through the glass. The sun had gone down and Marnie's short blonde hair glowed in the gray-green light of the New Orleans evening. He got out of the car and embraced her.

“It's true,” Pace said. “Other than the unlikely event of Sailor and Lula bein' resurrected, there ain't nobody on the planet other than you whose company I believe I could tolerate.”

Marnie laughed and said, “That either don't speak so highly of the human race or of you, Mr. Ripley, sir. Which is it?”

“I'm tryin' to decide.”

Pace picked up the few belongings he'd brought with him and followed Marnie into her house. Milk and Honey barked furiously at the sight of him, so Marnie put them out into the yard.

“What about Bigger, or Digger, or whatever his name is?”

“Digger's on his fifth tour of duty in Afghanistan. I don't expect him back for another six months. That's if he makes it back, of course.”

“A lot can happen in six months, Marn.”

“Sure as shit,” she said.

Marnie removed two Abita Ambers from her refrigerator, opened them, and handed one to Pace. They clinked bottles.

Marnie took a swig, grinned and said, “And I'm hopin' somethin' will.”

Pace swallowed half the contents of his bottle and smiled back.

“Did the thought ever occur to you, fine progeny of Sailor Ripley and Lula Fortune, that everybody's dodgin' bullets one way or another whether they know it or not?”

“It's a good thing for us then that most folks can't shoot straight.”

Marnie sidled up to Pace, kissed him softly on the lips, and said, “Think you could give me a straight shot where I need it the most?”

“Right now?”

“Rat now, as my Grandmama Elsie Buell in Nacogdoches used to say, bless her heart. I do believe history is still made at night.”

As Pace followed Marnie up the stairs to her bedroom, he recalled his daddy telling him that once when he was in high school following a girl up a flight of stairs like this Sailor reached up, put a hand between her legs and the girl turned and said, “Oh, what a bad boy you are.”

Pace put his right hand between Marnie's legs and without stopping she cooed, “I never could get enough of you bad boys.”

In her bedroom Marnie pulled down the shade over the window facing Orleans Street, then threw her arms around Pace's neck.

“Tell me, darlin',” Marnie said, “don't it feel like home?”