Something for nothing. It was the engine that drove all confidence games. People thinking they were going to get something for free. And all he was ever selling was air. But this time…he had merchandise to sell, and by this time tomorrow the deal would be done. Hot damn! he thought. A box of cash and all the good things that came with it. Then to Mexico, and all that came with his dreams.
He didn’t know how long he’d drifted off, but he was awakened by the sound of the door to the bunkbed room closing. The oil lamp’s wick was glowing orange on the writing desk. He leaned over and saw that Ginger had left her bunk. Gone to the outhouse? Then why didn’t she take the light? He checked his wristwatch and saw it was about twenty minutes past three. Well, whatever she was up to, she was a big girl and she could sure as hell take care of herself. So…back to sleep, if he could.
But he could not. He mopped sweat from his face with the sheet and in another fifteen minutes checked his watch again. She still hadn’t returned. Now he was wondering what she was up to. Gone for a walk in the woods? Doubtful, not after what he’d told her about the rental agent saying they needed a snakestick. He figured the canebreak rattlers around here likely killed nine or ten people a year, probably all niggers out working the fields. So where was Miss High-And-Mighty-Loose-Cannon-Lovin’ Ginger LaFrance?
He was unable to let it go. He thought she must be out on the back porch, probably smoking another fag and trying to find a breeze in the heavy heat that had descended since midnight but, again, why hadn’t she taken the lamp? Something smelled funny…the rotten peaches odor of wrongness in the air.
Clad in his undershirt and trousers, he swung down from the top bunk, picked up the lamp and went out into the front room.
She was sitting in a corner, her back to the wall, in one of the wicker chairs.
Her champagne-colored eyes glinted in the lamp’s light, but she did not look at either the light or him. She stared straight ahead.
She had the kitchen knife with the serrated edge clasped in a double-handed grip before her. Her cheeks and forehead were damp with sweat. As Pearly watched, she slowly lifted the knife, hung it suspended in the air for a few seconds over her head, and then brought it down so fast and hard Pearly felt the movement of air and heard the hiss of the blade.
“No, no,” she whispered, her face slack and her eyes fixed upon nothing that Pearly could see. “No…told you…not that way…no, no…who are you…who are you…”
“Ginger?” Pearly asked. He stepped toward her, the light offered as a solace to whatever darkness she was fighting.
“I wouldn’t do that,” came a quiet voice, followed by the crunch of teeth into an apple.
Pearly turned and saw Donnie sitting not in a chair but on the floor in the opposite corner. His legs were crossed beneath him and he was bare-chested. Beads of sweat glistened at the base of his throat. Thankfully he had removed the glass eye and electrical tape from his forehead. He took another bite of the last apple and said, “You probably want to step back. She’s liable to get up from that fuckin’ chair and cut your heart out.”
Pearly retreated toward Donnie. When his own back had nearly hit the wall, he watched Ginger lift the knife up once more in the double- handed grip, hang it suspended for a few seconds and then bring it down with fearsome speed and power. This time her face contorted with a savage expression. “Told you!” she said, but it was still just a ragged whisper. “No, no…not that way…who are you…who are you…” Then her face went slack again, the sweat gleamed on her cheeks and forehead, and with the knife clasped before her she slowly began to rock herself forward and back…forward and back…forward and back…while the dead eyes stared at nothing living.
“What’s wrong with her?” Pearly asked.
“She gets like this sometimes,” Donnie answered, which Pearly figured was no answer at all. “I guess it’s like lettin’ go of tension or somethin’.”
“What? She’s tense about tomorrow so she goes into a…” He didn’t even know what it ought to be called. She was whispering again but it was so low and unintelligible that it could’ve been a foreign language. “Can she hear us?” he asked.
“Naw. I’ve sat when she’s done this, called her every name of whore and laughed my ass off watchin’ her play the knife—and it’s always a knife, she can find ’em by smell I think—so I don’t believe she can hear any talkin’ when she’s this deep in.”
“Damn,” Pearly said, more of an exhaled breath than a word.
“Yeah. Hey…she ever pull that thing on you with the gun? The single bullet and all?”
Pearly was about to reply in the affirmative when he remembered he was talking to Ginger’s nephew. Or, supposedly her nephew. How the hell would he know about that, unless…? “Maybe,” Pearly said.
“Bet she did. Look at her rock herself. Got that knife ready to stab the world to death. You ain’t gettin’ me any nearer to her, that’s for damn sure.” He crunched into the apple again, enjoying the show that was being played out before him.
“How long does this go on?”
“Seen it go for a couple of hours. At the end of it she quiets down, gets up, puts the knife away and goes back to wherever she’s sleepin’. At light, she won’t remember a thing.”
Pearly eased down onto the floor a few feet away from Donnie, with the oil lamp between them. He listened to the eerie singsong rhythm of Ginger’s rant, which was delivered with ferocity but still remained a whisper. “How come she doesn’t want me to know her real name?” he asked.
“Don’t want anybody to know it. I’m family, so I do, but…it’s just the way she is, Mister Pearly. Thinks that whoever knows her real name has got some kind of power over her. Couldn’t stand that, I’m thinkin’. She can’t stay in one place too long, either.” He took another bite of the apple and watched the knife slowly go up, hang and then come down with a strength that would drive the blade into a bone. “Changes states and towns, changes her name. Got a fever to change herself, is what my ma says. Only she can’t change herself, not really, so she’s always on the move. But…she’s right proud of herself, comin’ through what she did.”
“Comin’ through what?”
“Don’t think she’d like me to tell that.”
Pearly considered his options. Then he said, “Tell me what you can and I’ll give you an extra five hundred from my share.”
Donnie chewed on the apple and watched Ginger, who was still muttering and staring at nothing, though her rocking forward and back had ceased. “A thousand dollars,” he said, in a voice so low it was as if he feared Ginger might hear it even though she was transfixed and deaf to the room in her own private apocalypse.
“Okay. Done.”
“Ought to shake on it.” He held a hand out, Pearly shook it, and Donnie said, “Now if you don’t pay up I won’t feel so bad ’bout killin’ you.”
“Fine. What’s the story?”
“This is all my ma’s tellin’, you know, so if I don’t have the facts exactly right it’s on her. Well…she had a kid at sixteen. Didn’t know who the daddy was, could’ve been three or four men is what ma says. She wanted to keep the kid. Ran off from home to do it, wound up in Alabama. Got work as a secretary but…you know…she had to do some other things to make enough money. Anyway, she lived in what my ma said was ’cross the tracks. I reckon every town’s got one of those. One day…she was sleepin’ in the place she was livin’…and the kid—I think he was six about then—went out to a playground couple of blocks away. Other kids played there all the time, kind of a neighborhood place I guess.”
Donnie paused to chew the apple down. Ginger had begun rocking herself again, though her mutterings were silent and the knife had ceased its war against the air.
“Two rich kids stole their daddy’s car,” Donnie went on. “Took it joyridin’, into that place across the tracks. Guess it was excitin’ for �
�em. Hell, I’ve done that, I know what it’s like. So they go screamin’ around with the cops on their tail and all of a sudden the kid drivin’ the car loses control of the wheel and that fine rich man’s car goes right into the playground. Yep. Hurt four kids playin’ there, broke their bones and such. But her little boy…well, ma said it broke him to pieces and tore him all up inside. Ambulance took him to the hospital but it was a time before they found out who the mama was, because she’d been lyin’ passed-out drunk in her bed. By the time the police straightened everythin’ out and she got to the hospital her little boy was dead…but it had took two days for him to pass.”
“She could’ve sued the family,” Pearly said. “Gotten a lot of money that way.”
“Yeah. Well, she got a lawyer and tried that. Pretty soon they turned it around that she was an unfit mother and it was mostly her fault for lettin’ her kid go out to that playground while she was lyin’ drunk in the bed. Yeah, my ma said they brought two lawyers in from Atlanta to turn everythin’ on its fuckin’ head. Then they fixed it so…Ginger…lost her job, lost everythin’ else and was lookin’ at jail time on charges of whorin’ and usin’ drugs. ’Bout then is when she cracked up, I reckon, and they sent her to that hospital.”
“What hospital?”
“Bryce, in Tuscaloosa. You know. A nuthouse.”
“A mental hospital? How long did she stay in there?”
“Two years, is what I heard. When they let her out, they near ’bout kicked her out of Alabama too. Right then, I think, is when she decided she wasn’t gonna be who she used to be. Right then, I think, she decided that it wasn’t all men who were gonna have the power and money in the world, and she was gonna get some herself however she could. Now I know that’s true ’cause she’s told me that directly.” He crunched a final time into the apple, biting down into the core, and then spat out a seed. “There you go. That story worth a thousand bucks, Mister Pearly?”
“Yes.”
“Let me tell you somethin’ for free,” Donnie said. “Soon as the money’s been got, she’s gone. I don’t know if you thought you were makin’ plans with her or anythin’, for after, but it ain’t gonna happen. So if I was you I’d pull up stakes soon as you got that cash in your hand, you head out wherever you’re goin’ and don’t look back.”
“Thanks for the advice,” Pearly replied, and he meant it. “What’re you plannin’ on doin’ with your share?”
“Raisin’ hell,” said Donnie. His eyebrows went up. “What else is there?”
Though Pearly didn’t care much for the younger man, he thought that maybe truer words had never been spoken. He stood up, dared to walk closer to Ginger, and moved the lamp back and forth before her sightless eyes.
“Playin’ with fire there,” Donnie said.
Ginger showed no reaction, except when he lowered the lamp and the darkness was on her face again she started that singsong muttering once more: “Told you…told you…no, no…not that way…told you…” And then the strange question, as if directed at herself: “Who are you? Who are you?” Her voice trailed off, unanswered.
“I’m hittin’ the hay,” Pearly told Donnie, but he knew he would be sleeping with both eyes open and his ears to the wall. He returned to the bunkbed room, put the lamp on the desk and climbed up to the top bunk, and there he lay trying to envision the paradise of Mexico again but all he was seeing was a vast plain of thornbrush and smelling the bitter fruit of rotten peaches.
When the door opened he nearly jumped out of his skin. By the lamp’s dying glow he could make out on his wristwatch that it was four forty-three. He heard her slide into the lower bunk, and then there was silence but for the hard beating of his heart.
Afraid of her? he asked himself.
Terrified, was the answer.
But it would be over in about twenty-one hours, and then he was quits with the both of them. Ginger was the one who’d brought up the idea of heading straight to Mexico, but what Donnie had told him made sense; Ginger had no destination, she was just travelling from one name and one con job to another, and that was her life.
“You’re awake,” she said.
He didn’t reply. He breathed so shallowly he felt like it was barely keeping him alive. After awhile he heard her turn over in the sheet and then be still, and he lay sleepless as dirty light slowly crept over the windowsill and through the curtains of ship anchors and leaping gamefish struggling vainly and forever against their hooks.
FOUR.
Blood Will Tell
Twenty.
“You ready?”
“Yes sir.”
“It’s time.”
Curtis and Ludenmere had shared that exchange nearly thirty minutes ago. Now, as the seconds ticked away toward one o’clock on Friday morning, Ludenmere guided his second car—a dark blue Pierce-Arrow sedan—through the streets of New Orleans on a northwesterly course. Curtis had the passenger seat, and behind them on the rear seat was the cardboard box holding two hundred and fifteen thousand dollars in bills not larger than fifties, the box itself lightly taped shut but not heavily sealed.
As he’d not had a change of clothes, Curtis still wore his Redcap uniform but had left the crimson cap at the Ludenmere mansion. Ludenmere had hardly slept last night and had drowsed only for an hour or so yesterday afternoon, when they’d gotten back from their trip to find the fishing pier at the end of Sandusky Road. He was dishevelled and weary and operating on the strength of nervous energy alone. He had offered the Pierce-Arrow’s wheel to Curtis but that wasn’t going to work since Curtis told him he’d never in his life sat behind the wheel of a car.
The streets were nearly deserted but for a few other nocturnal travellers. The day had been cloudy and heavy. To the northwest occasional streaks of lightning flared over the lake, and by their stark illumination for an instant turned the seething sky around them vivid purple. Ludenmere had brought a thermos of strong black coffee along and as he navigated the ghostly-quiet streets he drank down jolts of java one after the other.
“Tell her we’re comin’,” Ludenmere said, his dark-hollowed eyes fixed on the way ahead.
Curtis had already done that when they’d left the house, but he nodded and sent out, :Nilla, he says to tell you again we’re comin’. It won’t be long now.:
:All right,: she sent back. :I don’t think they’ve left yet.:
:But…they’re bringin’ you and Little Jack, aren’t they?:
:I don’t know. Like I said before, they’ve kept us in this room all day.:
Curtis was relieved that her sending was stronger than it had been yesterday. She must’ve been able to get a little rest, enough to recharge herself. They’d been talking briefly during the day, as he hadn’t wanted to run her down again, and it was during one of those talks that she’d told him they hadn’t seen any of the three all day, had had nothing to eat and nothing to drink.
:Let me know when they come for you,: Curtis told her. :We’ll be at that pier at one on the dot.:
:Thank you, Curtis. Thank you so much for being here.:
:Well, we’re gonna be there real soon, so there’s nothin’ for any of you to worry about.:
“What’s she sayin’?” Ludenmere asked, breaking Curtis’s concentration.
“She says they haven’t left yet.”
“Yeah, I expect they’ll make us wait a spell at that damned pier. But…we’ve got the money and that’s a done deal, thanks to Victor. He wanted to come with me and hide in the back seat, but I told him if they found him—and they were bound to look—there’d be hell to pay. I’m gonna have enough trouble explainin’ you.”
“How’re you gonna do that?”
Ludenmere stopped at a red light. He’d already told Curtis they weren’t going to run any lights or do any speeding; being pulled over by the police was not part of the plan and would ruin the time schedule they
’d figured out this afternoon. “I’ll say you’re my driver. They may not like it, but they won’t pay much notice to you.”
Curtis knew what that meant. “You mean ’cause I’m a Negro?”
“That’s right, and also ’cause you’re a skinny kid who doesn’t look like you could threaten a snowball. Don’t ask me to tiptoe through any gardens right now, Curtis. I’m not in the mood.”
“Fair enough,” Curtis said, without anger or resentment, because it was the reality of his world.
The light changed and Ludenmere drove on through the misty streets, where by night and the yellow-tinged streetlamps the famous old oaks and weeping willows of the city took on the shapes of gnarled dragons lurking on the roadside.
During the day, Ludenmere had shown Curtis a professionally-taken photograph in a silver frame of both the kids, smiling with their arms around each other. They were handsome children. Curtis thought Little Jack looked a lot like their father, but Nilla looked younger than he’d expected. He guessed it was because when they talked she had sometimes seemed older than ten years, surely older than he’d been at that age, and he figured it was because she—like her brother—had been blessed with the gift of not only a rich father, but the richness of an education. He thought she probably knew a lot more about the world than he did, though he tried to travel as much as he could through reading. It was a sorry thing, now, that she and Little Jack were getting such an education in how plain mean, conniving and selfish some people could be, especially about money…something he’d already been taught in his dealings with the Rowdy Pattersons and Miles Wilsons of the world.
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