Four and Twenty Blackbirds

by Cherie Priest

Page 13

 

  Never mind her poetry. It doesn't have to be good.

  My poetry was good, or at least it was predictably shocking, peppered with obscenities and sexual slang. Oh, all right. It might not have been that good, really, but it served my purposes. I got free booze all night anywhere I chose; and by the time I was old enough to use my real driver's license instead of the phony one, I was plenty beautiful. I had grown into a mini-Lulu, smaller and thinner, with breasts not quite so ponderous but full enough anyway, and the same long-lashed eyes and fat lips on a fair face. In a bigger city I might not have been so special, but the valley is a small pond and the fish are easily impressed.

  I was especially interesting to the valley boys because of my peculiar heritage.

  Ordinarily I checked "Other" on any form requesting racial information, for what was I to say? I was probably more white than black, but given the roulette wheel of genetics there wasn't any good way to guess. If I straightened my hair I could possibly pass for Caucasian, but most folks recognized on sight that I wasn't of any Nordic strain. In fact, much to my irritation, men had a tendency to think of my appearance as a conversation starter, or more often than not, as a precursor to a lame pickup line.

  Almost any given night I could expect to climb off the stage and have some good ol' boy waiting for me, offering me a beverage I wouldn't accept, because even simple politeness is more encouragement than they need.

  "That was real good," the evening's Romeo always began. "So what are you, anyway?"

  Ah, Dixie. Where even if they don't care anymore, they can't help but notice.

  I might choose to play stupid and toy with him, to force him to ask the question the way he meant it. "I'm a student. " "I'm a poet. " 'I'm a girl. " And I'd bat my eyelashes slowly and stupidly.

  "No, I mean, like, what race are you?"

  What was the point? Once on a day trip to Knoxville I bought a baby-doll T-shirt that said, "Not black, not white, HUMAN. " I wore it mostly on days that I didn't feel like answering questions.

  Another mixed-race girl worked the circuit with us, and she got the same crap as often as I did. Terry was some unlikely combination of disparate backgrounds—German and Indian, or African and Eskimo, or Mexican and Arabian, something along those lines. Something that left her not a shade darker than me but a touch more exotic.

  As far as I was concerned, she was still a teary-eyed poser. Although I couldn't stand her, Lu says I shouldn't be so hard on her, and she's probably right. In a roundabout way, it was my fault that she died.

  It happened the night of my last slam. Terry took the stage and held it hostage with her typical set of four-minute diatribes on (1) the fascist Republican regime, (2) her confusing cultural heritage, and (3) her whiny, ongoing battle with an eating disorder that wasn't working for her half so well as a balanced diet might have.

  Despite Lulu's warning that it's cruel to speak ill of the dead, I wasn't a fan of Terry's work or her personality—and on that final night Terry was at her worst. She tromped up to the stage in a leather outfit that would have looked great on someone else, but was a most unflattering contraption on her bulky shape. When she turned around and faced the audience I could see she was sporting glitter eye shadow again, so the spotlights flashed and sparkled on her shiny form as she clutched the microphone and raised her eyes to the ceiling.

  "Sex is like . . . a triple-layered . . . frosted cake . . . of danger. "

  She punctuated it with the heavy-handed pauses of Captain Kirk, but without the smiling self-deprecation that keeps William Shatner from being truly awful. To give credit where credit is due, she did have a good voice. She spoke mellow and low, and if she hadn't been trying so hard her poetry might have achieved some kind of comic sensuality.

  "I want you . . . as badly as a diabetic child . . . at a birthday party . . . with no clowns. "

  A friend of mine grabbed my elbow and squeezed it in affected agony. "This is just surreal. "

  Surreal. It was his word of the week. "This must be one of the circles of hell Dante accidentally left off the list. " He gestured at the bar with one languid white hand that poked out of a ruffled shirt straight off Robert Smith's back. "Want another drink? I'll buy, since you were darling enough to come and join us. Redeem us, even, from this steaming puddle of cat piss. " Redeem was last week's word.

  "Jamie, you're a master of understatement. Of course I'll get up there and make you look good. It is your show tonight, isn't it? You're the one who put it together this time?"

  "Uh-huh," he mumbled, scrutinizing a leggy brunette new to the group. He caught me catching him, and he returned his eyes to the stage, pretending his attention had never left it. Christ, I thought. He must be a Pisces.

  Terry hadn't even finished her first piece. "I think . . . I might have to take a bite out of you . . . before your attraction to me . . . grows stale. "

  Pause. A couple of people clapped tentatively. She cut them off.

  "Love is . . . a stale piece of leftover party cake . . . at the bottom of a black garbage bag on the floor . . . of the kitchen. . . . My father will take you to the curb . . . in the morning. "

  She bowed and nearly toppled forward, but recovered before we had time to laugh. "Thank you. My next piece is dedicated to my lover, Trent, to whom I have given my entire body and soul. Ahem . . . "

  Jamie dragged a hand down my shoulder and wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me closer so we could speak without being overheard. "Poor Trent," he purred. I'd had three glasses of wine, one over my usual limit, and I didn't care enough to push him away even though I should have. He wasn't repulsive, he was merely delusional, which could be forgiven. "We should get out of here after your set," he went on. "Let's go get something to eat, or something else to drink. What do you say?"

  "Why do we let her get up there and do that week after week?" My voice was loud enough to shove him back a few inches. "Why don't we just tell her she can only do four minutes and then she has to sit down and let someone else have a turn? Dammit," I swore, knocking Jamie all the way outside my personal space, "I've got half a mind to shoot her off the stage myself, before she does any more harm. "

  The gunshot that followed surprised no one more than me.

  Bang!

  A beer bottle, a pitcher, and a window shattered, all in one neat line.

  Terry flopped backwards, still clinging to the microphone stand. The cords and plugs ripped loose from their mounts in the floor and splayed about. Everyone dove for cover, screaming and hiding under tables, behind chairs. Behind the bar and down the hall. Out the back, for those who could make it.

  I was too tipsy to wrap my head around what was going on; or maybe I was drunkenly solipsistic enough to think I'd caused it. "Aw hell, I was only joking!" I shouted above the screams. "I was only joking!" But people were shrieking and Terry was shuddering, one black shoe jerking about at the edge of the stage.

  Another shot reverberated but this one hit the roof above me, sending plaster raining down on my head. I wrestled with a sneeze and half dropped, half fell to the floor, officially losing my cool. I wondered where Jamie had scuttled off to, and I took brief, apathetic note of how swiftly he'd abandoned me at the first sign of trouble. I rolled over to an overturned table and scooted behind it, smacking headfirst into another bystander who had also sought shelter there. He lifted his face to mine and I saw shock and fear there that matched my own.

  "Hey, Eden, are you okay?" he asked, lightly freckled upper lip trembling.

  "I never get any complaints. " Ha-ha. I'm not any funnier under pressure than I am onstage, really. But someone had to keep a level head and something about the chunks of vomit on his shirt told me it wasn't going to be this guy.

  I didn't know him, but there were more than a few people who knew me without my knowing them. I didn't recall seeing him at a slam before and I didn't think I knew him from school. I started to
ask who he was, but then I heard the scuffle created by two large men in the process of tackling the gunman to the ground.

  "Now the wrath of God has been satisfied!" the shooter was shouting, even as strong hands forced him into submission. "Vengeance is mine—vengeance is God's!"

  No. Oh, no way. No, it couldn't be.

  "I'll kill him as many times as I have to!"

  Seeing that the danger had passed, Jamie had crawled out from under his rock of choice and up to Terry; he pressed his ear to her ample chest. "Terry?" he called, manipulating her head with his hand. "Terry?"

  I climbed to my feet and walked in a furious, fearless daze towards the writhing mass of limbs that made up the three men—two holding fast and one resisting. It could not be. Surely someone would have told me if he'd been released. Surely.

  No. There he was, fighting feebly against the brawny arms that pinned him. His hair was much the same, no longer, no cleaner, no drier than the last time I'd seen him, and he hadn't gained a pound. Blond stubble burst from erratic patches on his chin and cheeks, and his eyes had new, blue circles drooping below the bloodshot globes. He looked old and tired and weak, except for the total madness he exuded with such rapacious enthusiasm.

  "Bars cannot stop the wrath of God. God finds a way. They tried to stop this, the agents of Satan, but that old devil cannot prevail. He cannot prevail against the Lord my God, and now His purpose is served. I don't care if they put me away again. I've done my work; I've done the Lord's work. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Blessed be . . . His name. "

  His conviction was horrifying.

  I approached him with fascination diluted by the dawning astonishment that he thought he'd killed me.

  Drunk or not, I managed to be insulted, though that was possibly unfair. He hadn't seen me in fifteen years, and Terry and I . . . well, to the passive, uninformed observer she and I had more in common than I liked to think. We were about the same age, and could have reasonably been of the same ethnic extraction. She was not ugly, and she carried herself with the same lazy air of a fat, spoiled Persian cat. As a card-carrying Leo, I like to consider myself feline in grace and appearance and, to tell the truth, if I were seven or eight sizes larger she and I could have passed for sisters.