Corina's Way

by Rod Davis

“I’d like a beer.”

  “In a minute.”

  As it often happens in public houses, she was quite busy just then. Glasses had to be washed, tickets rung up, liquor stock assessed. The Slim Jim rack was almost empty. Old Clyde needed a fresh one, too. Yet she did love him, for even amid the heavy demands of that hour, Bonita eventually found time to carry a Dixie to her brave and wounded knight. She leaned across the countertop to touch his face. He wasn’t sure exactly how she meant it and he flinched a little.

  “Yeah, they got you all right.” She withdrew her hand. It was an odd moment for Gus. He realized he had many conflicting expectations. One was that he wanted to be comforted. Another was that he wanted to be understood. Another was that he wanted to be long gone because there was at that moment between him and Bonita a delicate cosmic seam.

  On one side of the seam was a possible future and on the other was a past in which Gus had undertaken what very possibly may have been an ill-conceived venture. Not even an isolated misstep, fluke, momentary lapse of good sense—more like a sustained, conscious series of fuck-ups, from the chaplain’s job to the Gospel Tent. In undertaking said venture, Gus had loosed upon himself yet again the destructive weasels hiding in his shadowed soul.

  That was a dire reading but it was a possible one and it was probably a true one. Only the delicate seam lay between the playing out of the consequences of that hubristic Rube Goldbergian past—putting the best possible spin on it—and the possibility of a future which Bonita represented. Gus knew, without her saying anything, that was what her touch meant. She was touching his skin to see if she felt anything beneath it. He wondered what would have happened had she slapped him. Would the skin have collapsed over a void? He was not sure.

  “Jean-Pierre is going to be okay. He lost a lot of blood, though. I gave some and so did Paulus.”

  “You got the same type?”

  “No, but they said they could trade and it would keep the cost down.”

  “Corina?”

  “She’s still at the hospital. I think she’s spending the night in his room. She wouldn’t leave.”

  “She get hurt?”

  “No.”

  “She blame you?”

  Gus rotated the beer bottle between his hands. He looked out over the room. He didn’t say anything.

  “I just want to know one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Whatever was Joe Dell Prince doing there anyway?”

  Gus tried to laugh but it hurt. The resident in the ER had wrapped his ribs as a precaution and although they weren’t broken, spasms of pain raced up his side with untoward frequency.

  “Is that funny?”

  “No.”

  “And what about the girls? Did they get out okay? We couldn’t tell on the news.”

  “They’re okay.” As he spoke, Gus realized most of the deeply concerned patrons in the bar, except for Old Clyde, busy doodling on a napkin, were still trying to eavesdrop. The jukebox had stopped and no one was putting in any more quarters.

  “Everything’s fine, folks,” Gus smiled, as he often had to tourists at the Garden of Dixie. He raised his bottle in a toast. “Just a little fracas among the Baptists. It’s all over.” He realized they were still looking, and he could not help himself. “So y’all can just get back to minding your own fucking business.”

  The silence was grim, sustained, fraught. A dozen heads looked at Bonita for instruction. She turned her back to Gus and walked to the cash register. Gus drained his beer and slammed the bottle on the bar. “I’d like another, please.”

  “She’ll get it when she gets it,” said a concerned patron in a red T-shirt.

  “Somebody oughta kick your ass, boy,” said the stocky bald man in bermudas and auto parts gimme cap. His name was Henry. He worked at the post office.

  “Yeah, well, somebody already did.” Gus stared at as many of them as he could.

  “Leave him alone, he’s an idiot. Here, Henry, go play something loud.” Bonita gave Henry two dollars in quarters and took a new Dixie from the ice chest and carried it back to Gus.

  “You are, you know,” she said.

  He stared at the circular stains in the dark varnish on the bar. The faded rings were like little planetary orbits; entire galaxies. A universe of alien presences memorialized here and forever through the high intensity electron signatures cleverly captured by this special detection device cleverly disguised as an ordinary elbow rest for an entire continent of drunks. At last, for the Air Force, interstellar footprints—proof of UFOs and other life forms. Which he possibly himself represented. He could not look at her.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Yeah, I heard you.”

  Henry played “Gimme Shelter” by the Rolling Stones. Gus smiled. Henry had a pretty good sense of humor for a mail carrier.

  “I wish we could go home,” Gus said.

  Bonita touched his hand, rubbing little ringlets into his skin.

  “If I don’t get some shelter . . . Lord, I’m gonna fade away . . .”

  By Sunday the worst of the calls from the parents had tapered off, and with the exception of Cissy Otterton’s prick of a father everyone had been managed. Cissy would finish the year, it being so close to the end of term, but the “appalling bad judgment of you and especially your husband” would preclude his daughter from coming back in the fall, Dr. Otterton said. And firing Mr. Houston didn’t make it okay.

  All considered, Elizabeth considered the damage sustainable. In a way, she might yet see an upside to it all. For one thing, no one was blaming the Academy per se for the riot. She stretched her legs out fully on the lounge chair on the patio and reached over to the piñon end table for something to browse while she waited. Monday’s Times-Picayune was exactly where she’d left it. Not much housecleaning going on in the Hapsenfield abode lately. Not of that kind.

  She dug out the editorial page and read from it again. She read it aloud. “We should not let the unfortunate events at the Gospel Tent cloud the memory of our consciences regarding the essential good faith of Miss Angelique’s Academy in attempting to cross the racial lines which have yet again proven so uncrossable in our city. And, we must add, that applies to the less defensible, but not less idealistic, actions of headmaster Agon Hapsenfield.”

  She stopped reading and listened. Nothing but the sound of him shuffling through boxes in the bedroom. Just as well. She had been deliberately provocative. He had let it go. That was probably better. He was hoping to leave for Portland by late afternoon. He was taking the Mercedes; she was keeping the Chagall. The rest they would sort out later.

  She decided she hated the sound of her voice.

  She scanned the rest of the old paper. She’d bought several copies, intending to clip them. She tried to remember where she’d left the others. Maybe in the den. She turned to the city section. A small follow-up article on the “Gospel Riot,” as they were calling it, said Jean-Pierre Youngblood was recovering and would be out of the hospital before June. Elizabeth and Agon knew all about that—they were picking up the bill just to be on the safe side, legally. The rest was no longer her business. The police were looking for a Cuban construction worker. Senator Prince had issued a statement saying he blamed “rabble-rousers and drunks,” and that he was “rethinking my political agenda.”

  She put the paper down and went into the kitchen to refill her coffee mug. She heard a thud, then a “goddammit,” and some more moving of boxes. She thought about going to help him but instead leaned against the counter and looked out the window. She wasn’t sure if she’d miss Gus or not, especially with Agon gone. That was a good time that afternoon. Nor did she really blame him for anything. It was clearly Agon’s fuck-up with the senator. But Gus was a teacher and Agon was the headmaster and for the sake of the Academy fingering the appropriate scapegoat was necessary.

&nbs
p; When she called to tell him he was fired he hadn’t even protested. He only asked if she could box up his things and send them over with Ralph the deliveryman.

  “Need any help?”

  “No, I’m fine. Just a little clumsy.”

  “Let me know.”

  “I will.”

  It had been an easy decision, Agon, under the circumstances. It was like with Gus, only more so. Yesterday afternoon, on the patio, the very same one where she now lingered, they agreed to tear asunder what God had put together. He had been sitting on the sea-green chaise longue. In his white shirt and eggshell trousers he seemed almost like a pearl. Herself, she was without makeup and wearing the same cotton shift she’d had on since the previous evening.

  Far from feeling remorse for the riot and the shooting, Elizabeth’s soon-to-be-ex-husband was convinced it may have “freed minds.” He told her, “The hallmark of the primitive consciousness is the expression of our basic instincts. What could have been more basic than that upheaval of violence and hatred? I’m not saying it wasn’t frightening but even the fear was part of the instinct.”

  He had laughed lightly. “I remember trying to explain it to the lieutenant and honestly Elz, I think he thought I was crazy. But to be seen as crazy is not an insult to me. It may the proof of how sane I have become.” His eyes were bright and glowing. Her eyes held them for some time. But hers were not glowing. She had looked away and he had sighed. “I know you don’t see it.”

  “No. It seemed a disaster to me. And people were hurt.”

  “Pain is the first plateau.”

  She had slumped on a rattan armchair. “What’s the next one?”

  “You can’t know that until you are there.”

  “Oh, Agon, for god’s sake.”

  He sat up suddenly and held his right hand at a rigid right angle in front of his face. He seemed to stare past it as though it were a rifle sight. He said, “I see our plateau.”

  She said nothing.

  He shifted his gaze slightly toward her. “It’s yours.”

  She cocked her head.

  “What do you mean?”

  “This. The school. It’s yours, Elz.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because it’s the time.” He held her in his sights. “Everything that’s been happening has been leading to this. All of it, don’t you see? The women. The girls.” He winked. “The men. Mr. Houston. The detectives. Everything. And the glorious brawl and the revelation of it all—it was all headed here. And now it’s time. I will continue on my journey. You will stay here. This is your journey.”

  He dropped his hand. He was smiling in a way that both infuriated and disconcerted her. “I know you have your doubts about me, but you must see the rightness of this.”

  She had looked at him. In all her thoughts, she had never figured on it ending like that. She had anticipated lawyers. Fights. Property battles. A terrible mess. But now he had just waved it all away. It left her feeling a little unfulfilled. It made her want sex. But she did not want it with him and she could not have it with Gus.

  And so it was over. Agon had risen from the chaise longue and walked to her and leaned down and kissed her on the forehead, and then she raised her face and kissed him on his lips and then he pulled away and they looked at each other in a far less hateful way than she ever might have envisioned. He went out for a walk and she went to take a shower and change clothes and go shopping. And it was over.

  And now the Academy was hers. Agon wouldn’t discuss any details, saying that’s what lawyers were for. He wanted his last days there to be free of strife so he could continue to feel the “joy of the purge of rage.” So he had been mostly packing or gone somewhere in town, she didn’t know and didn’t ask.

  Today was the end of it. The movers would come for the big things tomorrow. What he needed at the retreat for the next several weeks he was putting in the car.

  She went into the bedroom. He was beatific again, except for the occasional swearing at banging his knees on a chair or dropping a suitcase on his foot. He had never been graceful.

  “Actually,” he said as she walked in, “I think I’d prefer to finish this on my own. If you don’t mind.”

  She stopped. “No, of course not. Do you want me to be here when you actually go?”

  He looked up from a well-stuffed bag. “Maybe it would be better to let the stream flow as it’s going.”

  She shrugged with some effort. Speaking had become a terrible burden. “Then good-bye.”

  “I want to be part of something.”

  That was the last she ever saw of him, too.

  23

  Considering he hadn’t even gone to Jazzfest and been around any of the trouble personally, Elroy was suffering mightily from the fallout during the past two weeks. The Saturday after the Gospel Riot had seen decent business, maybe because of spillover from the grand opening, but by Tuesday the SuperBotanica was so empty you could hear the clack of a person’s heels on the linoleum floor six aisles away.

  Worse, “Boycott Delgado” posters were back, stapled up on utility poles all over the neighborhood. No matter how fast Elroy had them taken down, they reappeared. He hadn’t seen a black customer for more than eight days. And with the people picketing again on Ladeau Street it wasn’t likely he would. Calling the cops did no good. They said the picketers had a right to be on public thoroughfares. They didn’t even hassle them. And the TV stations had been around twice doing stories. It was almost as bad as during the construction.

  Only now it wasn’t the usual “Buy American” thing that Corina had tried before. Now it was about how Elroy had lined up “the Klan Prince” to ruin the Gospel Tent. Elroy could never explain how he got into it on camera and now everyone in town thought he was some kind of racist nut. Someone had spray-painted “Gusanos Go Home” and “Ku Klux Kuban” all over the storefront stucco. Julio had a couple of employees wash it off but Elroy could still see the day-glo green residue in his mind.

  It was just a big mess. Prince had gone “on vacation” and didn’t have anything to say, and Hapsenfield was out in Oregon or somewhere, which was bad, because even when Elroy tried to blame everything on his stupid ideas it didn’t seem to stick. So Elroy was furious. Corina was turning all the blacks against him because he was brown, and now the media were turning everyone else against him because he was a Cuban.

  The only thing he had been spared was a lot of questions about Ocho Alvarado. The cops had got his name from Jean-Pierre Youngblood and they were looking for him and they knew he’d worked for Elroy, although thank god nowhere around the SuperBotanica since Mardi Gras. The truth was Elroy had no idea about anything about Ocho, except what Julio had found out, which was about the girl Maria. But Elroy didn’t tell the detectives any of that, because he’d only found out after the shooting anyway and anyway, fuck Ocho. Elroy was sorry he hadn’t just fired him a long time ago, like Julio wanted. But Ocho was a Cuban, and Elroy felt he had some responsibility. Which was stupid.

  No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t understand why it had gone so wrong. He took a chance to cut his enemies off at the knees and it didn’t work out. But it might have. What he told the reporters and most people except Julio was that all he’d done was introduce that skinny gabacho Hapsenfield to a state senator in the course of business—networking, he called it, at Julio’s suggestion. The rest was none of his doing. But Elroy didn’t lie to Changó, and he didn’t lie to himself. It wasn’t that bad a plan and it might have worked. But it didn’t.

  He pitched his empty Bud can up the fresh-polished tile between the aisles. It skittered. It was midnight and that was number six. Julio was wrong. It might have worked. Julio said, “That’s your trouble, Elroy. Even now you still can’t even see what a stupid idea it was to have that Klan man up there in front of all those black people. You can’t see how stupid you w
ere to have anything to do with it. You say you’re so glad we’re in America but you don’t get anything about this country at all. It was a stupid thing and you ended up fucking us up and you ought to admit it.”

  To which Elroy had exploded, “Fuck you, Julio. If you knew half as much shit as you say you did you wouldn’t be following me around like a dog all the time—”

  To which Julio had swung at him, missed, and cracked his knuckle against the wall in the back office. And then Julio had looked at Elroy as though at a pile of garbage and turned and walked out, with his knuckles raw and bleeding. So they hadn’t spoken in two days. Elroy figured Julio would get over it, in time. Or maybe he could tell Julio he was sorry. Or—oh, fuck it.

  He wandered amid the empty, well-stocked shelves. Sometimes he bumped into them. They were the kind on roller tracks so you could change the aisle widths whenever you wanted. It was easy to forget after six beers which aisles were this wide and which were this wide. He sat near a display of painted statues of the Catholic saints. Julio had installed viewing seats—“like in the art museums—”so the customers would have time to think over a purchase. It was a brilliant idea. The whole store was.

  Elroy looked over the enormous space. They’d strung a rainbow of banners across the ceiling—a color for each of the orisha. A big red one in the center for Changó. The PA system alternated Gospel hymns and Caribbean music. Every other hour they ran a raffle to give away something. They’d had to stop that promotion, though, because there were so few customers that one Venezuelan couple won three times in as many days. Elroy didn’t want to give them the prize the last time because he thought they were somehow cheating, but Julio said they didn’t need any more trouble and handed over the case of Florida water. But what an idea this SuperBotanica! And yet there were no people to see it. Even the employees had begun to turn sour. All three of the black ones had quit, and one of the Mexican women who ran the snack counter.

  Elroy drained number seven and slumped in his chair. He looked at the statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe. She was very beautiful, he thought, with all those sun rays around her. Julio said if the customer flow didn’t pick up they’d have to consider selling the grocery store on Melpomene to “increase liquidity.” Fuck that, too. Elroy’s liquidity was in the can in his hand.