by Jake Hinkson
I leaned over the table and growled, “You were right the first time, Felicia. I don’t remember you. That’s how important you are – I forgot I even knew you. But you wanted to come over here and insult me so you can feel better about your pathetic life. Fine. I hope you feel better. Now why don’t you get your fat ass up and get the fuck away from me before I make a scene in front of your friends.”
That shut her up. She liked quietly talking down to me as long as I sat there and took it, but she couldn’t afford to have anyone know what we were talking about. She slid out of the booth. “Been nice talking to you, Bill.”
She walked to the back of the bar, next to the powder room, and stepped into the phone booth. She put a nickel in the phone and slid the door closed.
I gulped my drink and searched my memory for her. Felicia Charbonneua …
I remembered the face, but not the name, much less what I’d done to make her hate me. I seemed to remember her eyes, but I couldn’t put my finger on the memory itself.
Of course, she was right. To an extent. I’d cut a wide swath through the girls at the Well Well Club when I first got to town. I’d made some friends, too, but in the end neither the relationships nor the friendships had lasted. I don’t know why.
I’d seen a few girls pair up – determined, somehow, to make a life together. I wished them luck, but I didn’t hold out hope for their success. I’d seen more like Felicia – the kind who finally sat down and did the hard math on the way things work in this world and decided to settle for some Harvey Wilson who could give them three kids and a house near a supermarket.
And me? Somehow, I’d ended up by myself, nursing my drink and thinking about some pretty preacher’s wife more than sixteen hundred miles away.
It had been months since I’d left Arkansas, but I could still taste her mouth on mine. I could still feel her shudder beneath my touch.
I kept going over it, that afternoon we’d spent together, the way she’d felt and smelled and tasted. But I’d left as quickly as I could. I’d run away, it’s true. But I hadn’t forgotten her. Forgotten her? Hell, I hadn’t stopped thinking about her.
The phone booth slid open, and Felicia walked past me without looking at me.
“Hey,” I said.
She stopped and turned around, smiling to herself.
“I didn’t forget Amberly.”
Her brow furrowed. “Who’s Amberly?”
I sipped my drink. “She’s the one I didn’t forget.”
~ ~ ~
After a few more drinks I stumbled home. The air was cool and crisp, but I was in such a foul mood that I actually broke out in a sweat as I staggered down Franklin toward the Chateau Michel.
The place was an eight story apartment-hotel with a front desk that faced the street. Rather than walk around to the front, though, I went in through the big parking area in the basement and took the elevator up to the fifth floor. The hallway was quiet. I had neighbors on either side of my apartment – a miserable-looking couple named the Palmers on the left, and a perky but boring young woman named Kathy on the right. Kathy was the sister of Mr. Palmer and just wanted to live close to her brother, I guess. I got the sense that Mrs. Palmer didn’t like either one of them, but my interactions with all three had been scant so maybe I was wrong.
I unlocked my door and pushed inside. There among the bills and advertisements scattered on my floor in front of the mail slot was a letter from Arkansas.
My breath cut off, and I had to concentrate to get it back. Without even closing the door to my rooms, I ripped open the letter. It was from Claude.
In an almost illegible scrawl it read:
Dear Billie -
I have asked Jim Nelson to put pen to paper for me to write you this letter. Jim is a feller I know who writes all my correspondence for me.
I am writing you to let you know that the preacher has said that he will lift his ban on Motion Pictures. You did it. There is one thing however and that is that he wants to talk to you again the next time you are in our Town. If you talk to him again, he will let me be.
Please come back soon as you can and talk to the preacher because he is Adamant. And he is not a man to be put off track.
Also when you come back please bring us more pictures with Gale Sherwood. She is real pretty and fellers like to look at her. Eustace Harington sucks his thumb when he watches that BLONDE SAVAGE picture you give us. It has been a big hit especially with Eustace.
Kindly Regards,
Claude Jeter
j/n
I closed the door and walked over to my couch. Sitting down, I lit a cigarette and opened a window. Far down the block, I could see a couple of teenagers roller-skating up the street.
I read the letter again. It said the same thing it had the first time.
I wondered what Amberly had said to her husband. Surely, she wouldn’t have said anything to him about what had happened between the two of us. So why did he want to talk to me?
Did she still want to see me?
I wasn’t slated to go back through there for a while. Claude and I had agreed on the next few months’ worth of pictures – provided he was still in business – and I’d already coordinated deliveries from different theaters in the region.
But I knew I wanted to go back. I wanted to see her. I’d run away from her once, but I did want to go back, to see if maybe … no, I couldn’t even bring myself to think it.
There was no scenario in which Amberly Henshaw got into my car and came back to California with me. There was no way that would work.
I smoked the rest of my cigarettes sitting by my window, looking out at the sky. I thought about Felicia Whatsername’s sneer and Amberly’s soft mouth. By the time I mashed out the last cigarette, I knew I was going back. If not to get Amberly, then at least to see her again.
I went to bed. I thought about a lot that night. Looking back on it now, though, I realize that I gave almost no thought to the question of why the preacher wanted to talk to me.
Part Two:
The Woman From Missouri
Fall, 1947
Chapter Six
None of the pictures had Gale Sherwood in them, so Eustace Harington would have to suck his thumb at somebody else. Claude stuck his cigar in his whisker thicket and said, “Why ain’t you got no more of her pictures?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess ol’ Gale only made one for us. I got some more crime pictures. The Big Fix has Shelia Ryan. She’s very pretty. I also have some more Michael Shayne movies.”
Franklin Roostervelt walked by and Claude leaned down and scooped him up. Leaning back in his creaky office chair, he smoothed the rooster’s feathers. “Gentlest creature I ever met, this damn bird. Never met his equal. Not among the poultry of the world, anyways.”
I sat on Claude’s desk with my paperwork in my lap. “How’d you come by him?”
“How does one usually come by a rooster?”
“Claude, I have no idea.”
“By way of a chicken’s ass.”
I turned my attention back to my paperwork. “That concludes that conversation.”
“You gonna go see the preacher?”
“Yes. Soon as we’re done here.”
“Oh hell, at this point we’re just foolin’ around. We already agreed on a whole mess of pictures. The distribution truck will come around every couple of weeks to drop off my orders, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then I reckon we’re done.”
I nodded.
He was right. I was just delaying my trip to see the preacher. I’d driven over half of the country to see the Henshaws, only to delay myself here.
“Any idea what he wants to see me about?” I asked.
“No, I do not,” Claude said petting the rooster.
“He seem mad?”
“He got anything to be mad about?”
“No.”
“Then you got nothing to worry about. Probably wants to give you the hard
sell on religion. Something tells me you’ll be able to withstand the pull. Then again, maybe not. He may save you yet.”
I folded up my papers. “I guess I’ll just run over there and have a visit with him and Sister Henshaw.”
Claude puffed on his cigar and stroked the rooster’s neck. “She may not be up for visitors.”
That stopped me. “What? What do you mean?”
“I hear tell she’s been out of sorts for a while.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Just what I heard.”
“Has she been sick?”
Claude flicked some ashes toward a tin can on the floor. “Don’t rightly know, Billie. I just heard that she’s been keeping to herself.”
“Maybe she could use a visitor.”
He scratched his whiskers. “Hell, I don’t see as it would do any harm.”
~ ~ ~
As the Ozarks settled into autumn, the trees turned a crazy mixture of scarlet and green, auburn and orange, all mashed together like one of those abstract paintings. When I drove up to the church, the building sat dark and gray in the middle of a torrent of color. Although the day was unseasonably warm and pretty, the storm shutters had been locked over the stained-glass windows as if a tornado was expected. I walked up the front steps and tried the double doors.
One door opened. I stepped inside. The church was as dark and humid as a dustbin.
I walked down the aisle. “Hello?” I called. “Anyone around?”
A few pinpricks of light stabbed through the shutters and into the floors. They sliced over my legs as I walked down the aisle.
I went toward the door leading to the parsonage at the back of the church, but when I got to the altar I heard the groan of boards to my left.
I turned and the darkness smashed into my head. I staggered backwards and tripped over my own feet. Hitting the floor, I saw spots of red against the blackness.
Boots clomped against the floors, legs over me, a hand grabbed my hair and jerked my head.
Through gritted teeth, he seethed, “Abomination.”
I clawed at his hand, but he slapped my face and my vision exploded again.
“Thou art an abomination.”
I balled up, trying to brace myself for another strike, but he moved away in the dark. I heard his boots clomp, heard his heavy breathing.
“Why you come back here?” he asked.
I tried to make him out in the dark, but with my head still spinning I couldn’t even see his outline.
“Answer me, girl.”
“You … you asked to see me.”
“No. Why are you here? Not to see me. You wanted to see her.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking ab – ”
Then he was on me again, yanking at my hair. I struck out, trying to hit him in the balls, but I only punched his knee and jammed my knuckles. He slapped me – two, three, four times.
The son of a bitch was too strong. I curled up.
As soon as I did, though, he moved away again. “Don’t tell no lies in this house of the Lord, you abominated whore. You come back here to see her again.”
“Yes.”
He took a deep breath. “Yes. Yes, you did. But she ain’t here. You missed her. Some women of the church come and got her and took her up to Black Tree for the day. She’s been waiting to see you ever since you left, but you missed her. She’s coming back, though. She’s coming back. You still want to see her?”
I covered my head before I said, “No. No, I just want to leave and never come back.”
“I’d wager that such is now the case. But I don’t want you going nowheres. You can’t come to my town and ruin my wife and then slither away like the serpent, leaving me to live here in this … in this befouled Eden with my fallen Eve.”
The red spots had stopped. The darkness, too, seemed to have receded as my eyes adjusted. I could dimly make out his figure, standing by the pew, just a few feet from me.
I didn’t say anything. Anything I said could set him off. If he planned to kill me, I’d have to be ready to move quickly. The longer we talked without him slapping me around, the more time I had to recover my vision and my wits.
He said, “I want you to stay here. I want you to see Amberly. Then I want you to punish her for me.”
I blinked at him in the darkness.
“What?”
“Book of Romans. ‘God give them up unto vile affections: yea, for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature.’ ”
I didn’t have anything to say to that.
“ ‘But we are sure that the judgment of God is against them which commit such sins.’ ”
I pulled my feet under me, so that I might be able to make a break for the door.
Hearing my feet scrape the floor, he said, “No use in you running. You run, and I’ll tell what you did. Ain’t no way you could make it out of the state before they got you. Sexual depravity ain’t just a sin, you know. It’s a crime. And Amberly, she won’t stand up for you. I’ll guarantee you that. She’ll say you held her down and abused her. Abused her with … what? A hairbrush? Yeah, I’ll make sure she says that. A hairbrush. Think on that. No more Hollywood. No job in the picture business. Just your photograph in the paper next to a photograph of a hairbrush, and a long jail term down in Eastgate Penitentiary. If I was a wagering man, I’d wager that them guards down there will take turns trying to hump the depravity out of you. That kind of thing has been known to work before.”
My stomach lurched. I knew he wasn’t lying, and I knew he wasn’t just trying to scare me.
“My wife,” he said, his voice seeming to slip away. “My sullied Eve.” His voice broke, like he might cry. “I should have known better. Eden can only be lost.”
“What … what do you want me to do?”
His voice came back, clear and strong. “I want you to kill her.”
“I … no … I can’t …”
“You can. You will. You ruint her. You might as well finish what you started.”
“Please, Brother Obadiah – I”
“I am not your brother.”
“Yes sir, but – ”
“You will do this. You’ll come see her tomorrow at noon. I’ll be away on a visit. You’ll lead Amberly into this sanctuary and you’ll kill her right here in front of this altar. I’ll arrange for some ladies to come up to the church. They’ll find her.”
He stood up in the dark. He walked over to me and leaned down. “I’ll know if you try to leave town. Everyone will know. And I will sound the alarm. The moment you try to leave is the moment you might as well take your own life.”
“But if I do this … then what? If I kill … your wife. Then what happens to me?”
He stood up. “Then I’ll leave you to God almighty. What he has in store for you is worse than any punishment I could deliver.”
With that, Obadiah Henshaw shuffled away into the darkness at the back of his church.
Chapter Seven
I lay down on the bed at the motor lodge and nursed my wounds. I dabbed off a little blood from my scalp where the preacher had ripped out some of my hair. Otherwise, the only real damage I had was a throbbing headache.
I lay back on the bed and wished the county wasn’t dry. I could have used a drink to settle my mind.
I had no reason to think the preacher was lying when he said that he would shout my sins from the mountaintops.
I had no reason to think the preacher was lying when he said that I would be arrested for sexual violation.
I had no reason to think the preacher was lying when he said that the men who would imprison me would be a pack of self-justified rapists.
Lucy and Eustace Harington … I didn’t think that they would take part in something like that. But you never know about people. Besides, they’d still arrest me. I’d still be in a hillbilly courtroom on a morals charge that was so unspeakable they probably didn’t even have a word for it.
The preacher wasn’t lying. It would be goodbye Hollywood and goodbye career. It would be time in an Arkansas jail and a record as a sexual deviant. One day inside would be one day too long.
I got up and went to the door and opened it to get some air. Screaming crickets filled the trees behind the lodge, but Main Street itself was dark and quiet.
A man and a woman walked up Appleton Avenue.
I started to shut the door when the woman waved to me.
I said, “Oh, good evening.”
“Evening, Billie,” Lucy Harington said. She wore a simple blue dress with a thin brown belt and brown flats. She stopped to talk to me, but she didn’t cross the avenue to do it.
Eustace wore blue jeans and a white button up shirt. He looked at his sister.
“The movie lady, remember?” she told him.
He nodded and smiled at me and let out something of a friendly grunt.
“How’s the picture business?” Lucy asked.
I nodded as if that was a kind of answer. “Oh,” I said, “it’s been good. Real good. I heard Eustace liked Blonde Savage.”
Lucy turned to give her brother a disapproving look. “He liked it a little too much.”
Eustace regarded the ground.
Lucy told me, “I’m glad you’re back in town, though. Means new entertainment in store for us.”
“I suppose so,” I said.
“No Cary Grant, though,” she said.
“I’m afraid not,” I said. “He doesn’t do PRC pictures.”
Lucy smiled. “That’s too bad. He is one handsome man.”
“He is.”
“Well, we’re heading down to Dub’s to get a bite of supper.”
“I thought Dub only served Breakfast and Lunch. Isn’t the name of the place Dub’s Breakfast And Lunch?”