Magnolia City

by Duncan W. Alderson

  The dismissive tone in his voice made Hetty go white-hot inside. “You’re right. I’m just your little debutante wife who shouldn’t fill her pretty head with all these nasty details. Why don’t I just go back to Houston until you finish your business and then maybe we can resume our marriage. Better yet, maybe we won’t resume our marriage. I’m sure Lamar would like to hear that it failed.”

  He shot her a reproachful glance. “That’s not fair.”

  “You’re right. It’s not. But neither is keeping secrets. I feel shut out and don’t want you coming near me at the moment.”

  “All right.” He let out a sigh of resignation. “I’ll tell you what’s going on—against my better judgment. Sam and Rose don’t want us going out to the big boats anymore. They want to bring everything in to a fish camp and sell it to us from there.”

  “Won’t that be easier?”

  “Yeah, if you don’t mind paying twice the price. Those Sicilians must think I’m a sucker. They want to mark everything up double what we pay off the boats. I can’t make any money that way. Neither can Prairie Dog.”

  “Why do you call him that?”

  “’Cause he comes all the way down here from Kansas. Besides, he looks like one.”

  “So you and Prairie Dog are sailing out anyway?”

  “Goddamn yes. I have just as much right to be out there as they do. It’s International Waters. They may own Galveston, but they don’t own the whole damn ocean.”

  “I see,” she said. “You’re not going to let anybody tell Garret MacBride what to do.”

  “Why should I?”

  So this isn’t about business, Hetty thought. It’s a pissing contest between a bunch of boys. To find out who’s got the strongest stream. She was beginning to realize what accessories came along with Garret’s make and model of manhood. The same power that attracted her—the engine that ran him with such a roar—could also veer out of control and crash. She remembered the tennis game with Lamar, how he’d refused to back away from it and lost. She didn’t want to see that happen again. “Let’s call your partner.”

  “You’ll meet him when we go back to Houston, I promise.”

  “No, I want to talk to him before you make this run. To find out why he’s not coming along. Why don’t we just ring up, uh—what’s his name, Del?”

  “Odell.” He clenched his jaw, the way he always did when he was trying to assert his will. “I wish you’d let me handle this.”

  “I don’t want to be that kind of wife, Garret. You might as well learn that right now. We tempt fortune together or forget it.”

  He stared at her speechless, the wounded look being edged out by a new glint of recognition. She could tell he’d underestimated her, hadn’t realized how far she was willing to turn the wheel and stake everything on the outcome. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to him that he could have a partner in the game, someone to share the risk he’d always taken alone. But she could see it in his eyes now: He was willing to open a forbidden door, invite her into the realms of authority and let her play. He gave her one of those intense looks, the kind that made her mother’s prediction come true: “The eye is a sex organ.” As she held his gaze and went wet between the legs, she realized: This doesn’t need to cool our marriage down but could heat it up even more. She went over to him, took the twisted cigarette out of his hand, and kissed his tobacco-scented lips for a long time. Then they placed the call.

  “Odell, I’d like you to meet my wife, Hetty.” He handed her the receiver. The sound that floated up into her ear wasn’t what she had expected. She’d imagined some kind of rough patter, a dark voice rising from the underworld with a gangster’s guttural pitch. What she heard instead was a charming drawl, the speech of a Southern gentleman who’d gone to good schools and traveled the world. He used words like esplanade and coterie. He complimented her, regaled her with stories, and referred to Garret as “an invaluable asset to our enterprise.”

  “I hear you’re not joining him on his little expedition tonight,” she said.

  “I may be audacious, my dear, but I’m not suicidal. The problem with men Garret’s age is that they still think they’re invincible. I have failed to dissuade him from this foolhardy jaunt. I’m afraid the burden falls to you now. My dear young lady, whatever you do, you mustn’t let him out of that hotel room tonight. Miscreants in Maceo territory have a strange way of disappearing. Our adversaries don’t countenance disobedience. Do I make myself clear?”

  “I didn’t realize my wifely duties would start so soon.”

  “They have to, if you still want to be able to refer to yourself by that blessed name, rather than another more mournful one that also starts with a w. I cannot emphasize this enough. Do we understand each other?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Hetty said, and slowly handed the receiver back to Garret. He said good-bye, and they spent the afternoon in bed. They felt closer than they’d ever been, wrapped in the covers, listening to the rain.

  “You want to know why I chose you over Lamar?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Because I always felt safe with you, Garret. That’s why I love you so much. The feel of you, the smell of you. It made me feel secure, taken care of. Like when you took me out to the sandbar. I would never do that alone, but with you, I can set my fears aside and do the wildest things.”

  “I’ll always take care of you,” he said tenderly.

  “Before today, I would’ve believed that. But I can’t tonight. That’s just it, honey. I don’t feel safe anymore. I feel afraid. Afraid for your life.” She pictured him walking out of the hotel room door into the dark night. Trembling, she clung to him. She couldn’t let go of his warm, fragrant body, the body she’d covered with kisses this week, the body she’d learned to adore. The thought of that body never being found again, not even to bury, sliced her heart in half. The other word, Odell had said, the mournful word that also starts with a w. She knew what the w stood for, and she said it. “Don’t make me a widow on my honeymoon, Garret. I’m begging you!”

  He cradled her for a while in silence. Then he finally said, “Does it really mean that much to you?”

  “Everything.”

  Garret picked up the handset and called Prairie Dog. “I’m not coming,” he said. “Be careful.”

  When Hetty woke the next morning, the bed was empty beside her. She could see a tinge of blue through the gauzy drapes. She lay there, unable to move, fear cutting into her belly like the edge of a dull knife. She was afraid Garret had snuck out in the night and betrayed their pact. But soon, she heard the key turning in the lock. He came in and stood wordlessly in the shadows for a moment. Then he walked over and sat on the bed beside her. He flicked on the lamp and handed her a pair of horn-rim glasses. The grease identified them as Prairie Dog’s. But something else spotted them along with the grease. Trickles of dark red. With a shock, Hetty realized it was dried blood.

  “They found his boat,” Garret said. “But they didn’t find him.”

  She buried her face in her husband’s legs and mourned for poor, ugly Prairie Dog, whom she’d only met once.

  “I think we need to leave Galveston now,” he said, stroking her hair. “How long will it take you to pack?”

  “Minutes.”

  When the bellhop came to collect their luggage, Hetty glanced around the room to be sure she hadn’t forgotten anything. “Good-bye, MacBridal suite,” she said sadly.

  As they drove down Seawall Boulevard, the streets were almost empty in the dawn. The rain had swept everything clean. The summer sun was steaming away the dark clouds in the east, burning its way through. It gleamed in puddles along the side of the road. Hetty kept glancing back, expecting to see a car following them. She prayed that they would make it to the causeway before they were spotted. As they turned northwest, she looked back into the rising sun and tried to draw its light after them. Lots of shadows still lurked down the side streets that could well up and swallow them. Garret didn’t say a
word, just drove as fast as he dared along Broadway. Hetty could see the causeway up ahead, clear sunlight striking it first. There was only one stretch of highway left. Not a car passed them either way. She looked into the oleanders lining the boulevard to see if any black sedans were waiting there to chase after them. She saw only pink blossoms dragging the wet branches down.

  She could hardly let herself breathe until they reached the foot of the causeway. Then they rose into the light, they lifted above the waters and the peril, and they headed toward their new home.

  Chapter 6

  Hetty wanted to go straight to Garret’s place so she could see where they would begin their married life together. She needed the reassurance of a home base, a roof to shelter her from the storm clouds that had gathered over Galveston. She knew that Garret lived in the Heights, a neighborhood she wasn’t too familiar with since it lay across the bayou in Houston. She wondered what his bachelor abode would be like. As messy as most men’s quarters? Or would he surprise her and dress his surroundings the same way he dressed himself, with a kind of flinty charm? She couldn’t wait to unpack, get settled in, and see how many closets there were in the place.

  But when they got to the Heights, Garret turned the Auburn into the driveway of a craftsman-style house that rambled back into a deep lot overgrown with twisting post oak trees. Massive square pillars held up a low-pitched roof. Hetty caught a glimpse of a hulking garage in the rear with rooms on the second story. Behind that, the hood of an orange truck hidden in the blue shade of the trees.

  “Is this where you live?” she asked.

  “Look—I’ve got to talk to Odell and tell him what happened.”

  “Can’t we go home first?”

  “Pearl will fix us some breakfast.”

  “Pearl?”

  “Odell’s wife. Pearl Weems. Come meet her.”

  He led Hetty through a screened-in back porch into a kitchen plated floor to ceiling with white porcelain cabinets. A woman was hunched over the counter in an old dressing gown, beating eggs with a whisk. When she heard them come in, she glanced up with large sad eyes. Hetty assumed this was Pearl but, unlike her name, there was nothing round or lustrous about her. She was more like the oyster shell: craggy, brittle, gray. The eyes were the only soft things about the woman’s face, half hidden by hair in need of a good long brushing.

  “Can a couple of newlyweds get some breakfast around here?”

  “Garret! How many times I told y’all, the wages of sin is death. But nobody listens to me. Thank the Lord you’re safe.” She wiped her spindly fingers on her apron and came over to give him a hug. “I’m Pearl Weems,” she said, extending a cold hand to Hetty. “I am so pleased to meet the new Mrs. MacBride—but not under these circumstances, o’ course. Have a seat, y’all. I’ll fetch Odell.” She slapped into the hall in her faded mules to yelp “Odellllllll!” up a flight of stairs. “He’ll be pleased you’re back safely, though it’s a shame y’all had to cut your honeymoon short. You got to live it up to live it down, I always say. Coffee, hon?”

  “That would be a lifesaver,” Hetty said.

  “A lifesaver! Ain’t you the one?” Hetty and Garret slid into the built-in breakfast nook while she clattered cups of coffee in front of them and went back to work. In no time, she had the air awash with the keen scents of morning: the sizzle of bacon, the tawny smell of bread turning brown in the toaster.

  But those aromas were shortly pushed back by an emanation of bay rum that floated in from the stairs. Hetty looked up and had to smile. Strolling into the room as though promenading along a boulevard rather than simply entering a kitchen came a portly man in a maroon smoking jacket with a gray satin cravat blossoming at his neck. He stopped, walking cane at a jaunty angle, and eyed her over the top of half-moon reading glasses that were inching down his nose. His double chin tripled as he lowered his head to get a better look.

  “Honey, this is my business partner, Odell Weems.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said, lifting a hand to him.

  “The pleasure is all mine, I assure you, young lady.” Hetty recognized the cultivated voice she’d heard on the phone yesterday. He strolled over, took her hand, and actually kissed it. “Garret didn’t extol your virtues nearly enough. You are far lovelier than we dreamed, isn’t she, Pearlie?”

  “Odell, you flatterer,” she said.

  He took a seat across the table. “And smart, too, since it seems you were able to dissuade Garret from his rash errand yesterday evening.”

  “It’s a good thing she did,” Garret said. He pulled the blood-spotted glasses out of his pocket and placed them on the sparkling white table.

  A silence so profound fell over the group that Pearl padded over to see what was up. They all stared at the smudged horn-rims. Light glimmered through the windows. Hetty felt a deep sense of relief to be sitting there safe and alive in the clear morning sun.

  “Prairie Dog,” Odell whispered solemnly.

  “You men!” Pearl said, shaking her head as she retreated to the stove. “Like to run me crazy.”

  “What does this mean, my friend?” Odell asked.

  “It means we have a problem,” Garret said, torching a Camel. “A real problem.”

  “Perhaps I need to pay a courtesy call to Poppa Rose.”

  “It won’t do any good,” Garret said. “The Maceos have got themselves a nice little monopoly. They control everything south of Dickinson.”

  “They can’t do that,” Odell said. “It’s against the law.”

  “It’s all against the law!” Pearl cracked an egg.

  “In answer,” Odell said, “I quote that great American philosopher, Henry David Thoreau: ‘When unjust laws exist, shall we be content to obey them or shall we transgress them at once?’ I say we transgress.”

  “You know best, dear.”

  Odell pushed his glasses up his nose to study the bloody horn-rims, then whistled. “So what you’re telling me is—we buy off the fish pier or—”

  “Or we don’t dare cross the Maceo-Dickinson line.”

  “And the prices on the fish pier . . .”

  “Are double what we were paying off the boats. I say we launch from somewhere else—Padre Island. They don’t own International Waters.”

  “They’ll find us, my friend. Look what happened to poor Prairie Dog.”

  “They’re not telling me what to do. I’ve got some big money to raise—enough to drill me an oil well.”

  Pearl slapped a steaming platter down on the table. “Now that’s enough about business, y’all. Let’s eat. Nothing’s worse than cold scrambled eggs.”

  While Garret and Odell spent the morning discussing strategy, Hetty let her hostess lead her on a tour of the property. She could tell that Pearl loved escorting guests through a home crammed with all the riches of the Sears, Roebuck & Company catalog. Gloomy, gargantuan furniture clashed with the craftsman woodwork: a dining table standing on massive legs, china cabinets rattling with teacups and gravy boats. Hetty was shown the Queen Anne chairs in the parlor, the glorious new Water Witch electric washing machine in the laundry room. All paid for by what Pearl described as “dark of the moon imports.”

  “Years back, I was like every housewife—you know, five dollars a month till it’s paid? That’s when we was Weems Moving and Storage. But ever since Odell’s been running liquor, I just order whatever I want. Now that’s my idea of an easy payment plan. How about you?”

  “Does it ever bother you?” Hetty asked, running her fingers over a mahogany chest. “Knowing your money comes from that source?”

  “Did at first. I was against it. I was raised in the Bible Belt—Lufkin, up East.” She pointed over her shoulder. “We was always taught, the wages of sin is death, but for now I say, I’m livin’ in sin and lovin’ it. Come see the den of iniquity.”

  Hetty trailed Pearl to a side entrance across the driveway that led into the garage. She stepped out of the high sun into near darkness, stumbling
for a moment. Garret’s brougham lurked in one of the bays and, as her pupils dilated, tall shelves seemed to crawl out of the shadows. Pearl flicked a switch.

  Bare bulbs hanging from the ceilings in each of the three bays dropped a dusty light over the scene: a cracked, oil-stained concrete floor, tools hanging on the walls, the smell of gasoline in the air. Exactly what she’d expect a garage to be like, except for one detail: The doors of the brougham were thrown open, the fenders unbolted, the seats pulled out. In every possible cavity glistened bottles, bright new shining bottles slapped with labels. They were massed on the floor, stacked on the shelves three deep, bottles and bottles and bottles. Hetty moved closer and read the labels: Johnnie Walker, Teacher’s Highland Cream, the Antiquary 20-Year-Old Scotch, Hiram Walker, Vat 69, Old Crow, Bacardi Rum. She’d never seen so much alcohol in one place. She took it all in, then walked slowly back to where Pearl waited.

  “They use this car for deliveries in town. Garret ever shown you his chauffeur’s livery? That’s how come Odell hired him—looks so fine in it.”

  “So he is a chauffeur?”

  “Ain’t you the one? He only puts the livery on to impress the clientele. Odell likes to be driven around in style. The big shipments come in that truck out yonder. Got a false bottom.”

  Hetty walked along the shelves. “This all the stock they have left?”

  “Now you know why Garret was itchin’ to sail out last night.”

  “But I don’t understand.” She turned back to Pearl. “Isn’t moonshine easy to come by?”

  Pearl looked wounded. “Oh, hon! Odell would never bottle alkie himself. It’s got to be imported under seal. He and Garret fancy themselves the elite among bootleggers. That’s why they got to find a new spigot pretty damn quick.”

  “Now keep in mind I didn’t have time to tidy up,” Garret said as they exited the Weems’ back porch that afternoon. “This elopement all happened so fast.” Hetty started for the car, but he turned and led her up creaking steps to the second story of the Weems’ garage.