by Steve Earle
“Uh-uh, honey!” Tiffany warned, one hand reaching for the door and the other into his purse to produce an ivory-handled straight razor. “You better stop this thing right now!”
The priest complied, bracing himself against the steering wheel, slamming on the brakes, and tossing Tiff into the dashboard like a rag doll. The razor clattered down into the tight space between the seat and the door. Then, before his passenger had a chance to recover his equilibrium, the priest mashed on the gas and drove down the alley until he spotted an abandoned garage. He wheeled the station wagon around back and parked parallel to a blank cinder-block wall, so close that Tiff couldn’t open his door more than a couple of inches. Realizing he had nowhere to go, Big Tiff fished desperately for the razor, and … found it! He brandished the six-inch blade, obviously determined to exit through the priest if necessary.
“I will fuck you up, you freak, if you don’t get out of my way!”
The priest held up both hands, palms out, so that Tiff could see that they were empty, and he struggled to catch his breath.
“I assure you I am a priest and I mean you no harm! I only want to talk!”
“Yeah, right!” Tiff snarled, lashing out with the razor but coming up short as the priest recoiled, narrowly avoiding the blade. Tiff couldn’t help being impressed that the priest, unarmed, continued to stand his ground.
“If you’re a for-real priest, then show me some kind of ID.”
For an instant the priest was insulted, but then he realized where he was and whom he was talking to. “Well, I don’t, I mean, I never …”
“Aw, come on! You got to have something on you that proves that you’re what you say you are. A bingo card, somethin’?”
The priest laughed a little at that, but Tiff wasn’t even smiling and he still had the razor. The priest waved the fingers of his left hand.
“I’m going to get out my wallet.”
Tiff nodded but extended the razor to arm’s length.
The priest pulled out a plain black wallet, rifled through it, and in a moment produced a dog-eared pale green document stamped with the seal of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and bearing the name of one Father Padraig Killen, born in Letterfrack, County Galway, Ireland, on the third of March in 1927, and he handed it over to Tiffany.
“You see right there, under ‘occupation,’ it clearly says ‘clergy.’”
Tiff scanned the document, comparing the vital statistics listed—brown hair, brown eyes, five foot eight, a hundred and sixty pounds—with the man who was still blocking his escape.
“Ireland, huh? I knew you wasn’t from around here.” He tossed it back. “Okay, so maybe you’re a priest.” Tiffany folded the razor. “But that don’t mean you ain’t a freak, so keep your ass over there. You say you’re lookin’ for somebody? Well, honey, I know everybody down here and everybody know me. You won’t get nothin’ out of them bitches back there, no way. Most of ‘em illegal and and half of ‘em can’t even speak American! Whoever it is you’re lookin’ for, if they down here I can find ‘em. Tell you what. For another twenty … Now, don’t you look at me like that! Just a little somethin’ extra for scarin’ a girl half to death!”
The priest replaced the card in his wallet, opened it wide, and found one more bill.
“Well, my resources are somewhat limited just now. Would you settle for a tenner?”
Tiff eyed the bill for about a beat and then shrugged and extended his hand, now empty of the razor, palm up.
“Who you tryin’ to find, honey?”
The priest smiled faintly, released the bill, and rolled down his window to let in some fresh air.
“I’m looking for a girl. A Mexican girl.”
“Well, there’s plenty of girls down here and most of ‘em’s Meskin.”
“This one would be young. About eighteen or nineteen. Her name is Graciela.”
Big Tiff stiffened, and the priest felt it all the way across the car.
“Humph! So that’s what you like, huh? Young, narrow-ass thing. Hell, if that’s what you want, I know a girl that does the whole thing, honey, plaid skirt, pigtails, and all—”
“No!” the priest interrupted, loudly enough that a faint ringing reverberated from the cocoon of glass and steel that surrounded them. “I told you, I just want to talk. To this one particular girl. I need to speak with her about a matter of some importance.”
“Well, I ain’t no snitch, and if you—”
“No, it’s nothing like that! She’s not in any kind of trouble. I only want to meet her because, well, I understand that she’s a Catholic and I want to offer her my assistance in any, uh, spiritual matter that she might—”
“Yeah, well, I don’t know nothin’ about that, bein’ raised up in the AME myself, and you know what else? I might have heard something somewhere about a girl like that, but for thirty dollars, that’s all I can remember right now.”
The priest struggled to control his temper. He’d always had to, ever his since his seminary days. He repeated the breathing exercise he’d been taught—in through your nose, out through your mouth— until he was at least outwardly calm. “That’s all the money I have with me.”
Tiff was certain that Father Killen was telling the truth but Tiff’s survival instincts had kicked into overdrive and he was acutely aware that continuing to converse with a customer who was willing to pay him to talk was tantamount to giving away a piece of ass and against his deepest principles. “Then that will conclude show-and-tell for today, honey. Feel free to come back on payday and aks me again, and in the meantime I’d appreciate it if you’d carry me back up to my spot now.”
The priest felt like he was entitled to an answer to at least one more question for his money, but he took in the determined look in Tiff’s eye and remembered the razor and thought better of saying so. He grudgingly ground the car into gear and rolled down the alley to the street. They pulled up opposite the corner where he had picked Tiff up, and the hustler reached for the door handle but then stopped, turned, and leaned back, lounging with his head lolling against the passenger-side window. His eyes narrowed to near slits, as if he were sizing the priest up. “You sure there ain’t nothin’ else I can do for you, Padre? I can suck the chrome off a trailer hitch.”
“Get out,” ordered the priest.
“Suit yourself!” Tiff snorted through elevated nostrils and then he glanced across the street to make sure that the girls were all watching before he got out of the car. Before the priest could drive away, Tiff leaned back in through the window, winked, and said loudly enough for the whole neighborhood to hear, “Thank you, honey, come on back an’ see me now, you hear?”
Tiff barely managed to avoid decapitation as the wagon peeled away.
The priest was back on the strip the next day, and the day after, and the day after that. He came at odd times, whenever his schedule allowed, and he witnessed much activity that intrigued him but almost none that he understood. In the name of discretion he parked in a different place every day, alternating between one side of the street and the other, but within a week everybody on South Presa had noticed the rather conspicuous vehicle.
For his part, Big Tiff was telling anybody who would listen that the stranger in the white Ford wagon was just a rich freak who liked to play dress-up and was queer as a three-dollar bill. Even looking at him, Tiff assured them all, would be a waste of their time, not to mention an invitation to serious bodily harm.
But truth be told, nobody on the strip was worried about the priest. Deeper mysteries were unfolding.
People were disappearing. Not that anyone on the strip suspected foul play. That had happened before, monsters that preyed on those whom no one would bother to avenge, but this wasn’t like that. Some did indeed simply vanish without a word or a trace, but most said goodbye to somebody, and that somebody told somebody else, and, hope being contagious, word got around.
Folks were getting out. Simply walking away. Everybody you asked
had his or her own theory as to where everybody was going and why, but they all added up to something to do with the Mexican girl who stayed down the street at the Yellow Rose.
Tiff didn’t get it. What was all the fuss about? A skinny little gal from some rat hole in Mexico with no hustle. She didn’t fuck, she didn’t suck, and she didn’t have to, because everybody on the strip was lined up to kiss her Meskin ass! Fuck that bitch! She was nothing!
But who knew what went on behind closed doors up there in that big old ugly-ass house.
Not Tiff, that was for sure, and he reckoned he never would because that bull dyke Marge didn’t allow niggers past the porch.
Father Killen had heard the same stories as Tiff had and received them every bit as skeptically. It was 1964, after all, and a modern seminary education had taught the priest that the days when God had any need of proving His existence by supernatural demonstration were long gone. His own faith was based on an unquestioning acceptance of a vocation that ran in his family, his older brother having been ordained a decade before him. The fact was that, where he came from, jobs were scarce. His calling was practical as well as spiritual.
When the South Presa girls began to turn up in his church, he was intrigued but he didn’t dwell on it. He never saw some of them ever again; he’d hear their confessions and then they’d waft out the door as if the weight of their sins were the only things keeping them in Texas. He often wondered about them, even included some in his prayers. He feared that most slipped and went back to their old lives on the South Presa Strip, but he liked to believe that some returned to their families or moved far away and started all over again.
But a few stayed around, took Communion, and joined the newcomers at the back of the nave. They came to Mass every Sunday, and with each passing week the priest watched in wonder as they were transformed. They greeted everyone that they met with kind words and smiling faces, and even the older parishioners were won over in time. They volunteered for any good works that presented themselves, and they did them with prayer and praise for God on their lips.
It was from them that the priest first heard of the blood on the bandage and the name Graciela, the miracle worker of South Presa Street. Finally, he had determined to find her and see for himself.
Father Killen grew more desperate with every passing day. The strip was less than a mile and a half long from one end to the other, and, toxic environment that it was, its roots in the surrounding neighborhood weren’t deep. One had to travel only a block east or west before malignant blight gave way to honest working-class squalor. It was ridiculous, thought the priest, that after driving from one end of the narrow corridor to the other, day after day and night after night, he had yet to lay eyes on the girl. Maybe he was wasting his time after all. Maybe she didn’t exist.
Occasionally he’d work up the nerve to make another pass at Chicago Boulevard. If Big Tiff was out, the priest wouldn’t even slow down. Even when he wasn’t, none of the girls would get anywhere near the priest’s car, no matter how much money he waved out the window, for fear of tangling with the intimidating transvestite. It was inevitable that a morning would come when Father Killen gave up, crossed himself, invoked the Holy Mother, and pulled the wagon over at the corner. All the girls stood aside, and Big Tiff climbed into the shotgun seat, unchallenged, the market successfully cornered.
Tiff’s triumph soon gave way to disgust. Father Killen was just like everybody else. All he wanted to talk about was the Mexican girl.
Tiff didn’t understand. If souls were precious and the priest’s stockin-trade, then it stood to reason that there was more than one sinner on the south side worth saving. South Presa Street had a thousand tales to tell, ruminations on ruined lives that, like all refuse, were worth something to somebody, and Tiff knew them all. There were at least a hundred girls on the strip in no less mortal peril. After all, neither Big Tiff nor anyone on South Presa had any firsthand (or even secondhand) knowledge of Doc’s girl accepting so much as a peso in return for sex. Nothing to tell, nothing to sell, Tiff figured, but the priest would have none of it. He would pay to hear only what Tiff could tell him about the Mexican girl.
Tiff heaved a sigh. “I know the bitch. So what?”
“So, do you know where I might find her?”
“She at the Yellow Rose.”
The priest held out a twenty “The Yellow …”
“Rose, honey.” Tiff banked it beneath his blouse. “Boardin’ house at the bottom of the strip. She shacked up down there with a junkie name of Doc.”
For some reason, that information struck Father Killen physically, a pang down low in his gut. What was he thinking? That she’d be a virgin?
“Doc, you say?” As much to cover his discomfort as anything else, he reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a small notebook, the kind reporters used, and a pencil. “Do you mind?”
“You sure you ain’t a cop?”
“If I were, don’t you suppose you’d already be locked up? Doc who?”
Tiff shrugged and lit a cigarette. “Doc’s the onlyest name I know. Used to be a MD, they say, before the dope took him down. Now he patches up folks that can’t go to no hospital and he takes care of the girls when they …” Tiff realized he had nearly misspoken. That information was worth a twenty by itself. He backpedaled a little. “Uh, well, you know, when they come down with the clap or the general cunt infection. He a bad dope fiend. Shoot a half a yard a day, or at least he did before she come along.”
“She?”
“The Meskin girl! The one you’re lookin’ for! That Gracy Ella or whatever her name is. She give me the creeps. I don’t go nowhere near the Yellow Rose. If you’re lookin’ for that hoodoo bitch, that’s where you’ll find her. But if I was you I’d swing back by the church first and pick up about a gallon and a half of holy water and some silver bullets and shit and you can drop me off right here, honey.”
He slammed the door and was gone before Father Killen could ask what hoodoo meant.
The priest found himself a parking spot on School Street where he had a clear view of both the front and back doors of the Yellow Rose. He’d learned quickly that arriving before noon was a waste of time. If he was in his spot by one or two in the afternoon he could witness the stirrings of the boarding house’s early risers, usually the elusive Graciela herself.
He saw her first in the dusty backyard hanging laundry out to dry. She wore a yellow floral cotton shift and nothing on her feet; her arms were stretched up to hold the corner of a sheet in place, and a pair of wooden clothespins were clenched in the corner of her mouth. There was nothing vaguely threatening about the girl as far as the priest could tell. On the contrary, Graciela was ethereally beautiful, even from a distance, the image of innocence, barefoot in the dirt and broken glass like a blossom in the wasteland. She seemed unaffected by her decrepit surroundings, even gay. Her very name sounded beautiful and fresh and clean, and the priest caught himself repeating it over and over to himself.
Graciela left the house infrequently, two or three times weekly at best, but when she did the priest followed on foot, and he found that her itinerary rarely varied.
First stop: the pawnshop up the street on the right. She’d stay for as much as an hour, sometimes more, but her business there was obviously of a personal nature, as she always arrived and departed empty-handed. After that she visited the beer joint. Sometimes she was in and out. Sometimes she stayed awhile, but she always at least dropped by on her way to her final destination, the grocery store. Some days she’d stop back by the bar or the pawnshop on her way home and leave some part of what she’d purchased behind. Acts of charity, the priest hypothesized. Interesting.
The other human traffic that Father Killen continued to witness on his daily stakeouts presented more questions for subsequent sessions with Big Tiff, at twenty dollars a pop, than it did clear answers.
“Who’s the old man, then?” the priest asked as he and his informant sat parked in the sa
me blind alley where they had become acquainted. “The fat one with the scar on his face, always about a half step behind a rather bent-over old woman. I’ve never seen him before, but the woman’s a parishioner of mine.”
“You mean Santo. He run the pawnshop, him and that mean-ass wife of his.”
“Mean, you say? Surely we’re not talking about the same person! I see her at Mass every Sunday and she seems like as sweet an old lady as you would ever hope to meet.”
Tiff’s mouth opened with a pronounced clucking sound whenever he delivered a piece of what he considered to be particularly juicy information. “Yeah, well, where the hell you think ol’ Santo got that scar from?”
Father Killen whistled, genuinely impressed. “Well, what about the big Mexican fellow then, in the black four-door Ford?”
The priest had known before he asked the question that no answer would be forthcoming. Not today in any case. Tiff did his best to ration his answers, always careful to hold something back for the next visit. He knew that the time was rapidly approaching when his rather shallow pool of marketable information would run dry. “I don’t know nobody like that,” he lied. “I be glad to ask around, though. Stop by tomorrow evenin’ and we’ll see.”