Thin Blue Smoke: A Novel About Music, Food, and Love

by Doug Worgul

  “I heard you was lookin’ for a blues singer,” she said into the microphone. “Do I have that correct?”

  The crowd answered as one. “Yes!”

  “Well then, Mr. Junior Provine, let me see if I may be of assistance,” she purred.

  The partiers let out with a whoop. She nodded at Pug who signaled the band which cut loose with the Bessie Smith classic “Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer,” one of Mother Mary’s signature songs.

  Mother’s loyal fans knew to join in on the line, “Check all your razors and your guns. Do the shim-sham shimmy till the risin’ sun.”

  Mary followed that up with the blues standard “Ain’t Nobody’s Business if I Do.” “If I go to church on Sunday, and I shimmy down on Monday, it ain’t nobody’s business if I do.”

  Mary looked tired. The party had taken a lot out of her.

  “I’m going back to my barbecue and vinegar pie in a minute here,” she said, catching her breath. “But before I do I want to thank my good friend A.B. Clayton for this wonderful party.”

  She pointed to A.B., who was standing with Ferguson, LaVerne, and Angela. She waved to him and threw him a two-handed kiss.

  “Thank you, my dear boy.”

  The crowd expressed its gratitude with applause and whistles. A.B. felt sweat form on his upper lip, forehead, and along his spine. He smiled and waved back at Mary. He thought about throwing her a kiss, but didn’t do it. Angela put her hand on the small of his back and patted him. Then Mother started a steady rhythmic clapping, and the audience joined in. Then, softly, and at first without the band, she began to sing “Come on Children, Let’s Sing,” Mahalia Jackson’s gospel standard.

  “Come on children, let’s sing, about the goodness of the Lord.

  Come on children, let’s shout, all about God’s great reward.

  Guides our footsteps everyday, keeps us in this narrow way.

  Come on children let’s shout, how the Lord Almighty has

  brought us out.

  There’s none like him, without a doubt.

  Come on children, let’s sing, about the goodness of the Lord.”

  When she got to the bridge, Mother got up out of her chair and did a little side-to-side slide step, her hands raised in praise. The three older women from Mt. Zion Missionary Church were also inspired to get up out of their seats and dance. At that point, nobody was left sitting.

  “He has been my all and all. He will never let me fall.

  That is why I can sing. That is why I can shout.

  Because I know what it’s all about.

  The goodness, goodness of the Lord, the Lord, the Lord.”

  Mary led the party in five choruses, then with a wave of her hand signaled that she was going to wind it down. And, just has she had started it, she ended the song a cappella, but this time in a low, commanding voice.

  “Because I know what it’s all about.

  The goodness, goodness of the Lord, the Lord, the Lord.”

  LaVerne and Ferguson helped Mother down off the truck and back to her table where, as promised, she helped herself to some more barbecue.

  A.B. went to check on Leon and Vicki. The food was pretty much gone and people were leaving, so the three of them started cleaning up. Junior was through for the night and sat down with Mother for a piece of vinegar pie. Except for Del James and Bob Dunleavy who stayed and helped with the tables and chairs, the remaining guests said their goodbyes and went home. When the parking lot cleared and LaVerne had locked up the restaurant, A.B. thanked Leon and Vicki and sent them home.

  Ferguson offered to let Brother Ignatius sleep on his couch for the night and Iggy took him up on it. Iggy locked up the truck and he and Ferguson walked across the street and down the block to Ferguson’s apartment.

  A.B. and Jen Richards were the only two left in Babaloo’s parking lot.

  “So, Jen, do you need a ride home?” A.B. asked. “I’ve got my car.”

  “No,” she said. “I’ve got my bike. It’s just nice and cool and quiet and I’m not quite ready to go.”

  She hoisted herself up and sat on the back of the truck. A.B. did the same.

  They were silent. Off in the direction of Union Station there was a single whoop of a police siren. A.B. took his cigarettes out of the inside pocket of his dinner jacket, removed one and lit it, inhaling deeply.

  “Dang, Jen, This might be the happiest night of my life,” A.B. said. “I do think God has blessed me.”

  Jen nodded. “It was a good one.”

  He offered Jen a cigarette and she took one and he lit it for her.

  “I’m not sure it can get any better than this.”

  Jen turned to him and smiled. “Maybe it can.”

  They sat there on the edge of the truckbed and finished their smokes in silence.

  22

  Don’t Look Back

  LaVerne Williams has only one memory of his mother. She is walking up the path to his grandmother’s porch. She is wearing a yellow dress. She is young and pretty. She smiles and waves at her son. He is playing with a grasshopper in a jar on his grandmother’s porch steps. His mother bends down to embrace him and he reaches for her and the jar tips over and the grasshopper hops out onto his mother’s arm and she shrieks and jumps away from him. The hem of her yellow dress brushes against his cheek. That is all he remembers.

  Except that sometimes he also remembers the dust that rises around his mother’s feet as she walks toward him, and the sound of his grandmother’s screen door as it squeaks open and clacks shut, and the heat of the sun on the back of his neck, and the tapping noise the grasshopper makes when it jumps up against the lid of the jar. And the stiff, stale-smelling stain on the hem of his mother’s yellow dress.

  Then sometimes he remembers only that once when he was a child he played with a grasshopper on his grandmother’s porch.

  *

  There might have been more memories, if not for Delbert. For years, Delbert Douglass Merisier III watched in consternated silence as his niece, Loretta, desolated his sister Rose’s life. The manipulating, lying, and stealing started early. While other little girls her age were mastering jacks and jump rope, Loretta perfected her ability to set one friend against another to her advantage. She honed her skills at extracting compliments and favor from her teachers and her friends’ parents. She practiced distracting her playmates while deftly tucking their toys into her pockets. When confronted with evidence of her misdeeds, Loretta was cunning and convincing in protesting her innocence.

  “Rose, you know the child lies to you and everyone else,” Delbert would say. “Why do you let her get away with it?”

  “She’s only that way because her daddy run off,” said Rose, referring to Big Bill Williams, who, as far as she knew, was still legally her husband though she’d not laid eyes on the man in five years.

  “It’s not that her daddy run off that’s the problem, Rose,” said Delbert. “It’s that she’s got too much of her daddy in her. He was no good. He was worse than no good. He was evil. Besides, lots of kids’ daddies run off and they don’t lie and cheat, all the while with a big smile.”

  “I need to be a better mother then,” said Rose, reaching into her handbag for a handkerchief.

  “I’m not sure you can love her out of this,” said Delbert. “I’m not even sure you could beat it out of her. It’s just in her.”

  Rose couldn’t bear to hear her brother talk that way. But he wouldn’t quit. He couldn’t bear to see Rose consumed by worry and shame.

  Sometime after she turned fifteen, Loretta started taking the bus into Houston on Fridays after school, returning on Sundays with money. Rose said nothing, but Delbert demanded to know where the money had come from.

  “I worked for it,” snapped Loretta. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “Worked f
or it, how?” Delbert snapped back.

  “Maybe I got a part-time job down there,” said Loretta. “There’s nothing goin’ on here in Plum Grove, and never will be. There’s no money here. There’s nothing for me here. So I go where I can get what I need.”

  When she was 16, she quit school and began spending more time down in Houston. When she came home, it was only to eat and sleep. What little conversation there was between her and Rose ended in hostility and hurt. Loretta was hostile. Rose was hurt.

  One Sunday afternoon Rose returned from church to find Loretta drinking coffee at the kitchen table.

  “What a pleasant surprise,” said Rose. “I wish you’d been home sooner. You could have come to church with me. Everybody would have been so happy to see you.”

  Loretta grunted. Her eyes were red and puffy, and her hair was stiff and dry. There were three buttons missing from the back of her dress, and she smelled of sweat, mildew, and cigarettes.

  Rose smiled hopefully. “Would you like to help me out in the garden with the peas and lettuce?”

  Loretta snorted in contempt. “You gotta be shittin’ me.”

  She got up to leave.

  “Why do you hate me, Loretta?” Rose asked.

  “Why do you care?” Loretta shrugged.

  “Because you’re my daughter,” Rose pleaded. “Because I love you, child. I don’t want to see your life go this way. It doesn’t have to go this way. I don’t want to lose you.”

  “I’m already lost,” Loretta said. She went to her bedroom and fell asleep on her bed. When she woke up, she left the house without saying goodbye.

  *

  One morning Rose was awakened by the Liberty County deputy sheriff, Link Thompson, knocking on her front door.

  “Miss Rose?” the deputy called at the door. “You in there?”

  Rose peered through her front window as she wrapped herself in her housecoat. When she saw who it was, she went to the door expecting news that Loretta was dead.

  “Deputy Thompson,” she said. “What do you have to tell me?”

  “Miss Rose, we have your daughter Loretta over at the jail,” he said. “They arrested her down in Houston for prostitution and brought her up here to us. They didn’t have room to keep her. So they gave her to us and said we could do with her what we thought was necessary.”

  Rose held her hands to her face.

  “She was pretty sick when we got her, Miss Rose,” said Link. “Drunk maybe, or high. She’s got marks on her arms. We’re not going to keep her. So you can come get her.”

  Rose nodded.

  “I’m real sorry about your girl, Miss Rose,” said the deputy, tipping his cap.

  *

  Loretta’s pimp—who called himself “Sweet”—prided himself in his ability to use charm and empathy to recruit and retain personnel. A smile, a kind word, a sincere personal question about family or school, and soon girls would be telling him their life stories—information he skillfully exploited.

  “Darlin’, sounds to me like your papa’s holdin’ you back. Makin’ you sweep the floors and do all that cookin’ for him. Where’s that going get you? You got dreams, don’t you? You want to go somewhere, be someone special, don’t you? Well, I’m tellin’ you, you are special. You’re young and beautiful and there are a lot of men out there, like me, who would appreciate spending time with a young woman such as yourself. These are good, decent, hard working men, who are looking for companionship, and understanding, and affection. And they gladly pay to spend time with someone special and pretty. And the money they pay is money you can use to make your dreams come true.”

  Sweet also knew how to bring his product to market. After long meetings at the hall, union members emerged weary and pent up, and on their way home, many were likely to encounter friendly young women out for a good time. After Saturday night cock fights behind the roadhouse, liquored up contestants could expect that their victories would be celebrated and their losses consoled by nice girls looking to do a little something bad.

  Sweet had a knack for scouting out special events that attracted men with spending cash—traveling carnivals, boxing matches, horse races, and such. In the fall of 1946, one of these unique business opportunities presented itself. After the Kansas City Monarchs lost the 1946 Negro Leagues World Series to the Newark Eagles, Satchel Paige, the Monarchs’ star pitcher, joined up with Bob Feller, the Cleveland Indians ace, for a barnstorming tour. Paige and Feller assembled teams of “all-stars” from their respective leagues and together they hit the road, playing series of games to sold-out crowds in big city and small town ballparks from coast-to-coast. Houston was one of the early stops on the tour, after which the teams were scheduled to play in Oklahoma City. However, a tornado in Oklahoma City kept the caravan in Texas a day longer than planned, so the promoters quickly arranged for a game at the ballpark in Humble, Texas; just north of Houston and south of Plum Grove.

  Sweet got word of the game from a bookie in the Fourth Ward who was both a business associate and a regular customer. Sweet immediately mobilized his workforce, including Loretta, who knew the area well.

  The venture proved profitable. At least three dozen fans and players purchased services from Sweet’s twelve girls over the course of the nine innings and after. Loretta was even invited into the Paige All-Stars locker room.

  Two-hundred and sixty-six days later LaVerne Williams was born. Seventeen days after that Loretta was arrested in Houston for stabbing Sweet in a disagreement over money. Sweet didn’t die. But he did lose an earlobe.

  Loretta’s trial lasted about an hour, after which she was sentenced to two years and two months.

  Rose was heartbroken. Delbert was relieved. Together they undertook to raise up LaVerne in the way he should go. For Rose it was a second chance. A chance to do things differently than she did with Loretta. A chance to get it right. For Delbert it was a chance to be a part of a child’s life. Loretta had never liked him. Maybe LaVerne would.

  By the time Loretta was released, LaVerne was a healthy, happy, strong-willed child who more than anything else loved playing catch with his uncle.

  In spite of Rose’s efforts to find her a job at Raylon Rice and Milling, so that she might return to Plum Grove to live, Loretta went back to Houston instead.

  “I’ll be fine, Mama,” she promised. “I’m not going back to that way of living. I’m all straightened up.”

  Loretta said nothing about bringing LaVerne with her to Houston. In fact, she showed little interest in LaVerne.

  “I’ll come up and see you Mama,” she told Rose. “And the baby. He seems like a good little boy.”

  She gave Rose no address or way to get in touch with her. It was six months before Loretta came back to Plum Grove. She stayed for three days. Most of the time she slept, and at no time did she hold or even touch LaVerne. One afternoon, as she sat on the back step smoking a cigarette, LaVerne came around from the front of the house with his ball.

  “You want to play?” he asked Loretta.

  She looked at him and smiled. “You go ahead. I’ll watch.”

  LaVerne shrugged and walked next door to Delbert’s house where his uncle was playing dominoes on the porch with his friend, Fred Hartholz.

  That’s the way it went. Loretta would arrive unannounced and leave without saying goodbye. Sometimes it was only weeks between appearances. Usually months.

  When LaVerne was four years old, Loretta showed up on her mother’s porch in a yellow dress, her face scrubbed, her hair pulled back. She was smiling and weepy.

  “I been saved, Mama,” she told Rose when she came to the door. “I been baptized and everything. It’s going to be different now. I just wanted you to know.”

  Parked out on the road was a shiny black Cadillac. There was a man in the car wearing a black suit, with a white shirt and black tie. Rose couldn’t see his face fr
om the porch.

  “That’s Hiram,” Loretta said. “He’s a preacher. He’s the one who brought me to Jesus. We’re going up to Tulsa for a tent meeting, Mama. And I wanted to tell you so you wouldn’t worry about me anymore.”

  She looked down at LaVerne who was sitting on the porch steps holding a Mason jar. She reached her hand out to touch the top of his head. Then the preacher sounded the horn and Loretta stopped. LaVerne looked up at her. She turned and walked down the path to the black car. Rose sat down on the steps next to LaVerne and they watched the car drive off.

  *

  It was three years before Rose heard from her daughter again. Delbert returned from town one afternoon with his and his sister’s mail, and there was a letter from the Julia Tutwiler Prison in Alabama.

  Dear Mama,

  I am here because of prostitution and heroin and they say I hurt a man bad in a fight in the motel. I don’t expect you to visit me. I only wanted you to know where I was.

  Your daughter Loretta

  *

  LaVerne sometimes asked Rose about Loretta.

  “Your mother is a lost soul,” she said. “She can’t seem to find her way. She always chooses the wrong road. I don’t know why.”

  Delbert was more direct.

  “I don’t believe your mother is lost,” Delbert told his nephew one summer evening as he and Hartholz and LaVerne were smoking briskets and sausage in the pit behind the butcher shop. “She did choose the wrong road. But she chose it. She didn’t wander down it accidentally. She chose the wrong road because it was the wrong road.”

  Hartholz shook his head and spat on the ground.

  *

  When LaVerne was 15 years old, one of the women at Plum Grove Second Baptist Church told Rose that she’d seen someone who looked a lot like Loretta in Houston at the bus station. Then one of the customers at the butcher shop told Delbert that he thought he’d seen Loretta at a juke joint in the Fourth Ward.

  “It sure looked like your sister’s kid,” he said. “But I know she was in Tutwiler, so maybe it wasn’t. Or maybe she’s out now.”