As soon as it was past, she hurried across Commerce Street. She turned around at the corner and thought she saw a shadow dart in back of the church. Was someone following her?
“Chip, is that you?”
Nothing. It was ten thirty-two. She didn’t have time to worry about it. She hastened down the sidewalk lined with little one-story cottages. Her back was burning with pain as her toes in her little strappy sandals hit the searing pavement. Across the street was the old parish cemetery where her brother Norman was buried, next to her mother. The crape myrtle shading their graves spread its pink blossoms over them. She felt a pang of guilt. She hadn’t visited them all summer. She promised herself she’d take the children there before she left with Parker. If Parker hadn’t left already. She looked at her watch. It was ten thirty-three. Oh God, let him stay a little longer. Please let him wait for me.
CHIP FOLLOWED HIS mother along the street, hopping fences, hiding behind the wash flapping on the lines. He watched her go into a fit of coughing and slow down. He noted with satisfaction the dark circles spreading under her arms.
She began to wheeze. A stitch of pain dug into her side. What if he’s gone already? He wouldn’t leave before I got there, said her Voice of Hope. But what if he does? He’d said he had to leave today. If he thought I’d stood him up, he’d be gone and I’d have no way of reaching him. Then a thought, like a cloud she was trying to banish, hung over her no matter how fast she walked. If he’s gone, what do I do with my life?
THE PARADISE WAS cool but Parker wasn’t. He checked the clock. Ten-forty. A bottle of JAX was going flat in front of him. Untouched. A sick feeling spread over him. Sissy had suckered him. Again. She was staying with the toad.
“Something wrong with your beer, Parker?” Rosalie asked.
He raised the bottle to his lips. The liquor tasted sour. The minute hand on the wall clock clicked over to ten forty-one. Sissy wasn’t coming. Okay, he could handle that. He was out of here.
But first, he’d give her a call at home. Maybe her burns were worse than the doctor thought. Maybe she couldn’t leave the house.
RED ROSES CLIMBED over a picket fence, filling the street with their fragrance. As Sissy neared the open gate the roses shivered and dropped their pedals. A chicken stumbled out onto the sidewalk. It gyrated in front of her, blocking her way, spraying some kind of dark liquid. Sissy jumped back and saw the chicken’s head was cut off. The dark liquid was its own blood.
A Negro cook ran out of the yard. “I hope you didn’t git no blood on that pretty green dress of yours,” she said, catching the bird. “Lemme have a look.”
But Sissy had already started to run around the corner into Progress Street. She still had two and a half blocks to go. Her heels made clicking and scraping noises on the burning cement.
Parker put down the phone and went back to the bar. “Sure I can’t get you something else?” Rosalie asked.
“No, thanks.” He threw her a dollar. Before she could make change he was out the door.
The sunlight blinded him.
BUT NOT CHIP, who caught sight of Parker, a block and a half away, leaving the bar, turning away from them, and heading for his car. Then Chip saw his mother pick up speed, run out into Commerce Street, dodging trucks and cars and Gentry’s lone taxi as Parker opened the door of his MG. He saw the big man get into the convertible and start the engine.
“Parker!”
Chip knew the man couldn’t hear his mother over the roar of the engine. He saw Parker turn and start to back up and then jam on the brakes. Saw him leave his car half out in the street, vault out of the MG, and run to her. And he saw them go into the bar together. Chip smiled. Knowledge is power, all right.
He dashed back to the house and into his room, where he snaked under the bed and pulled out a box. On the outside was a picture of his chemistry set, on the inside was the yellow sundress with the creosote handprint that his mother had thrown in the trash at the beginning of the summer. The dress he had sneaked outside in the middle of the night to collect for just such a target of opportunity.
PARKER HELD HER chair. The bar was dark. The aroma of bourbon and Coke filled her nostrils. The air conditioner beat a soft drum solo. They were both strangely shy. She had already asked him about his hands. He had already inquired about her back.
“I must look a sight,” she said, raising a fluttering hand to her hair.
“Yeah.” He pulled up a chair so close their thighs touched.
CHIP PEDALED AT top speed. The box with the dress was in his basket. He dropped his bike in front of the old brick courthouse that filled a whole block on Grand Street between Church and Education. He went inside, looking for his father.
PARKER LEANED TOWARD Sissy and touched her hair. His heart was pounding in time with the air conditioner. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” he said.
“I’m not fool enough to let you get away from me again,” she said. Her eyes shone and caressed him.
Parker touched Sissy’s cheek with his fingertip. “You’re sure, now?”
“I’m sure,” said Sissy, surprised at how sure she was. She took a deep breath and all the chains that had wrapped up her existence burst. She was finally free. “It’s time I had a life. And I want to spend it with you.”
Parker let out a whoop and opened his arms. Sissy moved toward them. They were her home.
Parker, careful of her bandaged back, pulled her onto his lap, just as Peewee came through the door.
OUTSIDE, CHIP LEANED against the wall, under the wooden overhang. He’d tried to squeeze in behind his father, but Peewee had pushed him out. Sharp fumes of bourbon and Coca-Cola filtered through the door.
He felt anxious. What if his daddy didn’t do anything? It would be just like him. The boy paced back and forth in the shadows. He thought about his chemicals running down the wall. He needed someone on his side. Someone with some gumption.
He ran around the corner to Grand Street looking for his grandfather and found him, just as he thought he would, at Thompson Campaign Headquarters with the candidate, watching the Thompsonettes paint campaign signs.
The candidate took him into his private office, where Chip told Tibor and Bourrée everything. And as his mother had predicted, he saw no reason to stick to the truth. “They was fucking right there in the kitchen, Pawpaw, standing up!” Chip saw his grandfather’s eyes become slits. “This is where he was feeling her up!” The boy held up the yellow sundress. He gave it to the men so they could touch the creosote handprint.
“In front of her children,” said the future congressman and defender of the family.
“When?” asked Bourrée. His voice sounded constricted.
“Just about every morning. Soon as Daddy left for work, they’d be going at it.”
“Corrupting the morals of her own children,” said the candidate, shaking his head.
Bourrée’s face shut down. That’s why she stood him up in New Orleans and humiliated him in the river yesterday. “A woman like that don’t deserve to live.”
WHEN PEEWEE ENTERED the Paradise, the blast of sunlight from the open door burned into Sissy’s vision. All she saw was Peewee’s shadow. She jumped up and felt Parker stand up behind her.
Her heart was loud in her ears. She was afraid Peewee would find some way to stop her. And then she saw his chin tremble. “Peewee…” Even after what he’d done to her the night before, she still hated to see him suffer.
Beads of sweat dripped into Peewee’s eyes. He wiped a tar-stained hand across his forehead, and Sissy remembered how many times those dirty hands had touched her and her skin crawled at the memory.
“We were gonna tell you, Peewee,” Parker said.
Peewee looked like he wanted to jump the bigger man, knock him down, but he checked himself and made an ugly sound that had a k and a y in it.
Rosalie, behind the bar, handed him a drink. “On the house, Peewee.” He picked it up and looked straight into Parker’s picture in his high school
football uniform, framed above the bar. Peewee gulped the bourbon and Coke and slammed down the glass. It slid across the bar out of control. Without another word or even looking back at them, he walked out the door.
“Oh God, Parker, I didn’t mean for it to happen like that,” Sissy said.
“I know.”
And then she thought about Peewee grabbing her shoulders, stuffing a pillow over her face as he crawled over her tender back, bruising her skin, rutting and grunting. “But I can’t go back to him.”
PEEWEE CAREENED OUT of the darkness into the sunlight.
Chip was waiting for him in front of a neon sign that said PARA-DISE LOST and DIXIE BEER. “You see ’em?” he asked with the excitement of a boy who knows the right answer. But Peewee just stared at his feet and shook his head. The blacktop, hot and bubbling, rose to his throat. It bubbled up out of his mouth and boiled in his stomach. He was drowning in it. He wondered why he bothered to go to work in the morning.
“It’s like I told you, right? Am I right?” Chip asked, hopping.
Hot tears of shame trickled from Peewee’s eyes. He heard a mean little snort. He raised his head and saw Chip had Bourrée with him.
Tibor had been waylaid by some voters at the corner of Grand and Progress. He slapped one on the shoulder and shook hands with another, but he was keeping his eye on Bourrée and Peewee in front of the bar on Progress Street.
Bourrée looked at this sniveling son of his, and something mean rose up inside him. It was like with a cockroach. It don’t bite, but you stepped on it all the same. People said they spread disease. But in his entire life, Bourrée had never heard of anybody catching cockroach fever. No. He knew better. You stepped on a cockroach to hear the shell crackle under your boot. “Stop blubbering, boy. For once in your life act like a man.”
“She cheated on me, Daddy.”
“Pitiful,” Bourrée said under his breath. “What’d you expect? You married the town pump.”
“You take that back!” Peewee’s voice was high and out of control. “Before we got married, she swore to me she’d never slept with Parker Davidson. And she never went with anybody else before me. Not steady. And her daddy was real strict.” His voice trailed off. The pavement quivered with mirages.
Bourrée eyed his son with contempt. It was time the boy faced facts. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a quarter, and gave it to Chip. “Run around the corner and get me a newspaper.”
“Awww, Pawpaw!” Chip whined.
Bourrée knew the boy didn’t want to miss a minute of the drama he’d launched. “You do as I say.” And then he leaned down as if to a conspirator. “I don’t expect no change.”
The teenager sped off, passing Tibor, heading toward the bar.
When Bourrée figured Chip was out of earshot, he turned back to Peewee. “Fine boy,” he said.
“Do you know something about my wife that I ought to know?” Peewee strained to make his voice strong and manly, but it quivered like the sidewalk.
“Only that you sure as hell wasn’t the first.”
Tibor came up behind Peewee and laid a comforting hand on his shoulder.
Bourrée savored the moment. It had always stuck in his craw that another man claimed to be the father of one of his sons. Of course, he’d realized how convenient it was at the time. But times change. “Now, I don’t know about these other kids of yours, but I was the one that stuck that first baby into her belly.”
“You goddamn liar!” Peewee screamed, and tried to punch his father in the stomach, but Tibor grabbed his arms from behind and held them.
“Now, you just calm down, you hear me!” the D.A. said.
Bourrée breathed into his son’s face. “What do you think I was doing out in the woods that year you was whining to go duck hunting? Playing with my dogs? When did you start diddling her? Count the months, boy.”
Peewee let out a sharp cry and began to shake. “Chip was premature!”
Bourrée and Tibor exchanged amused looks. “Mighty big preemie,” Bourrée said. Peewee looked like he wanted to kill his father. Bourrée just stared his son down until he crumpled and Tibor let him go.
Bourrée adjusted his white shirt, remembering how Sissy looked lying there in her short, little cheerleader skirt, her legs covered with goose bumps, her panties pulled halfway down. And how she felt all young and tight when he crawled on top of her. “Now she’s giving it away to that clipped-dick in the bar.” He should have drowned the bitch yesterday.
Bourrée saw the rings spread under his son’s arms. He could smell the sour sweat of rage. Bourrée remembered the bucket Parker had thrown at him. Total war. “At least you could take care of that mutt that’s sniffing around under her skirt.”
“Do what you have to, Peewee. No jury in the parish would convict a man for standing up for his rights,” the district attorney said. “Hell, I don’t believe you’d even be indicted.”
Bourrée watched the D.A. take Peewee aside and walk him down the street. He saw him pat the younger man on the back and send him across the tracks to Rubinstein’s.
SISSY GRABBED HER purse and tossed in her cigarettes. “Let’s get out of here,” she said. But as she headed for the door her ankles wobbled in her high-heeled sandals and she stumbled against a scarred wooden table.
Parker helped her to a chair. “I’m okay,” she protested, “really.” But she didn’t try to get up. The nervous energy that had propelled her through her pain all morning had deserted her. She looked up at Parker and said, “Give me a minute, okay?”
Parker smiled until the corners of his brown eyes crinkled. “You can have the rest of my life.” He brought her a bourbon and Coke over a glass filled with cracked ice.
PEEWEE WALKED PAST Rubinstein’s windows jammed with pressure cookers and lawn mowers. A rifle hung on a rack in the back of the display. But all Peewee saw was his own reflection.
He walked into the sporting goods department, where Buster was standing around, talking to the salesclerks. He pulled up his belt, which had slipped below his belly, and said, “Hey, Peewee, gonna do some duck hunting this year?”
“I expect so,” said Peewee.
“How can I help you?” Buster stepped behind the oak display case and took out a key. He helped Peewee to a Smith and Wesson .38 Chief’s Special and a box of cartridges. He put the sale on Peewee’s bill.
Peewee loaded the pistol and stepped out into the street. The heat suffocated him. The bourbon beat a tom-tom in his brain. She’d stolen everything. Even his own father. His heart pounded in his temples and his feet felt heavy, but the excitement of a loaded gun in his hand drove him on.
OUT IN THE country, the Panama Limited hurtled down the Illinois Central tracks, heading for Chicago.
Sissy heard its early rumblings in the bar and tried to stand. Rosalie made an ice pack and wrapped it in a bar towel. Parker held it to Sissy’s burning neck.
“Rest for a minute,” he said. “You’ve had a hell of a time.”
RED LIGHTS FLASHED and the railroad warning bell clanged. Peewee stepped onto the tracks anyway. He felt them tremble, heard the train coming in, but he didn’t pay any attention. His glasses were so fogged up he couldn’t see. He took them off with his left hand and rubbed them on his shirt. He thought about his wife sitting on that clipped-dick’s lap and his face twisted at the memory. “We were gonna tell you, Peewee.” He picked up his step. The railroad gates closed behind him. The Panama Limited shot through the intersection and screamed.
SISSY FELT THE cold water from the towel filled with cracked ice drip down her back, wetting her bandage as Parker rubbed it over her neck, under her hairline. “I want you and the children out of there, today.”
“Oh, Parker…” she began.
“I’ll pack you all up.”
Sissy sighed. She was so exhausted.
“There’s nothing left for you there except to torture one another. How many more days of your life you gonna devote to that project?”
/> She reached for his hand. “Thank you.”
“You mean it?” His voice was eager.
“I can’t sleep there another night,” she said, stroking the fingers of his right hand.
He bent over and gently kissed her hair. “I love you, you know.”
Sissy looked up at him. “I know.” She took the ice pack away. She thought about sleeping all night next to Parker, waking up with their legs entwined. She thought about them traveling together, seeing all those places he’d told her about. She wouldn’t let him feel worthless or doubt himself ever again. She’d help him build whatever life he wanted, in Boston or Timbuktu.
He sat across from her and brushed her cheek. “Say it.”
She shook her head. She’d never told any man she loved him.
“You can say it, Sissy.”
She looked into those deep brown eyes and a shiver of excitement went through her. She realized she was finally a woman. She was taking her life into her own hands.
“Say it,” he whispered.
But she never did, because at that moment Peewee came back into the bar with a half-cocked revolver in his hand.
Parker jumped up, knocking over his chair.
“Size don’t count for nothing now, you fucking Jew!” Peewee raised the gun.
Sissy saw Rosalie duck behind the bar.
Parker tried to push Sissy behind him, but she was fed up with men fighting over her.
“Now, just stay cool, sugar, I’ll handle this,” she said. Her heart was pounding as she faced down that greasy black pistol. She knew it was Peewee’s first real hold on power, but she placed her body between the two of them anyway and held out her hand to her husband. “Give me the gun, Peewee. You don’t want to shoot anybody.”
The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc Page 32