“Got it.”
Althea took a deep breath and looked out the pickup window. They were parked in front of Winthrop’s hardware store—the only newish looking building on the city block— facing toward an old WPA bricked street. The abandoned 19th century buildings running along the road were the same dirty red brick and looked as if they were on their way to ruin. Grass grew in large weedy clumps between broken patches of what might have been sidewalks. Trash and dead leaves huddled in the gutters. Hot August wind whipped up the red dust and leaves and carried it all tumbling down the street. The sky had a burned creamy white appearance, like scalded milk.
Althea’s heart raced as she looked at the hardware store. It was the only building not to have an old western facade. It was new, metal, made like a Quonset hut, but the door looked old and battered. It was dull white with heavy hinges and peeling paint. Men in battered old pickups were parked in front of it.
A half dozen or so overalled men were standing around the front door, chewing tobacco and shooting the shit. Althea felt revolted by their presence and wished they’d move off. This was private business between her and Daddy Dearest. She didn’t need a pack like that sniffing around while she worked.
“Your daddy’s a rich man,” Cally said softly as she looked out toward the store. “He has stores all over the Parish. And he has designs on becoming the next Kingfisher. He’s on the city council as well as a member of the Knights of Columbus. He’s running for lieutenant governor,” She scowled, “and is keeping a girl about your age...you know what I mean...”
“How do you know all of this?”
“I kept track. I keep in touch with my mother too. Oh we haven’t seen each other in years, but I do write her once a month. She’s kept me up-to-date on some things. And other things I found out by reading the local newspaper Mom sent me, and then there’s other ways,” she said cryptically. “And don’t you dare tell your mother about that.”
“Are you kidding?” Althea asked. “Especially on a day like this?”
Cally laughed.
“I wish you’d let me in on your little secret,” Althea said. “It would have saved me a lot of time, energy and effort.”
Cally shrugged. “I really didn’t think you’d go through with it.” She eyed her niece. “In fact I’m still not sure if you are or not.”
“Oh believe me, Tante, I am.”
“Did Mr. Lindt show you things?” Althea whispered after a long pause.
Cally jerked her head around and stared at her niece. “What put an idea like that into your head?”
“That last day with Mr. Lindt. When he changed. You said something about the ‘showing.’ Is that what he did with you too? Did he show you things?”
“Is that how you found out about all of this?”
“You haven’t answered my question Tante.”
“Well...” Cally’s voice faded out as she relaxed back into the seat.
Althea removed the little pendant once more. “I’m not afraid,” she said. “He’s here, with me.” She bit her lower lip and added, “And he’s here with you too. He’ll never let anything bad happen to us. Just like that day when he got the Remnants to chase him instead of killing us all. And you know they would have if he stayed an instant longer.”
Cally’s face relaxed. “A remarkable man, our Mr. Lindt,” she commented.
“He loves you. He told me.”
Cally’s face contorted. “I know.”
“And I love you too, Tante.”
“I know you do bay-bay. And I love you too.”
Althea paused, feeling too deep in the moment. She thought about the scene in the hospital. “You’re the bravest woman I know,” Althea said. She swallowed a lump in her throat and placed the necklace back into her blouse. “I saw what you did in the hospital, right after I was born. You stole me right out of the nursery. I don’t think I would have had the guts to pull that off.”
“Not half as brave as your momma. You have no idea what she went through to keep you.”
Althea cocked her head, looking once again out the window. “Do you know what my father looks like?”
“Just go in and ask for Mr. Winthrop. He’s in there. I’ll bet on it,” Cally said, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye.
“Wish me luck?” Althea asked.
“I’ll go one better. I’ll pray for your safety. I’ll never forgive myself if you get hurt. Now, get what you’ve got to do over and done with before I change my mind.” She shuddered. “Being this close to that creepy bastard makes my skin crawl. I never did like Jimmy. I never knew what your mom saw in him.”
Althea nodded and got out of the truck, shutting the door quietly behind her. She wiped her palms off on her skirt, nervously adjusted her hair and then walked purposefully across the dusty windswept street to the hardware store. She approached, seeing several men frankly leering at her in front of the doorway.
Above their heads “Winthrop’s Hardware” blazed in peeling red letters with a lightning bolt etched across the top of the door casing. Below, on the glass, were faded posters and signs advertising everything from fuel filters to sixteen penny nails.
As she approached, the men noticed and stepped aside, offering wolf whistles and suggestions that otherwise would have made her blush. But not today. Today she was a grand dame, a goddess, a Bette Davis and Joan Crawford bitch queen rolled into one. She felt her confidence grow despite what the men were saying. She felt her power blaze within her, just as she did when she pushed Jake off the dock seeming ages ago. The jeers and sexual taunts meant nothing to her. The men who tried to halt her progress into the store meant nothing to her. Her heart pounded, true, yet she was determined to see her plan to completion. Althea knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it would work. And when it did, things would change greatly. For her and for everyone else concerned.
Her reverie was cut short by a fat balding man in overalls but no shirt, who cut in front of her.
“Whatcha need darlin’?” he drawled. “Goin’ in to see the man with the fuzzy balls?” He looked down at her chest. “We can show you just as good a time as he can. Maybe even better.”
The men snickered. Althea ignored them. From the corner of her eye, she saw Cally rolling down the window and sticking her head out.
“Get out of my way,” Althea said softly, dangerously, “before I do something that will baffle proctologists for years to come.”
“Oooo,” one of the men behind her exclaimed. “Such awfully big words for such a little bitty workin’ girl. Now what are you gonna do, go tell your daddy?”
How prophetic, she thought. Instead she looked fat boy right in the eye and said, “Get out of my way.”
“You’re sure uppity for a putain aintcha missy?” the fat man said. “How about I take you right off of your high hor—”
Althea drove the peg of her spike heel into fat boy’s sneakered foot. Sharp intense satisfaction welled up in her when she felt rather than heard the bones in the man’s foot crack. She grounded down harder in sadistic glee as she tried to drive the heel completely through.
The men behind her, gasped. Fat boy yelled, and swung a meaty fist at her and managed to miss. Althea drove her knee into his groin and he toppled onto the ground, clutching his nads and vomiting on the cracked concrete entranceway.
Nonplussed, Althea stepped over him and headed toward the door. The men, she noticed, did not approach her, but stood in stunned silence as she passed.
“Hey!” Cally called as she approached. Althea turned with her hand on the door knob and saw, along with the rest of the men, that Cally was walking over, swinging a tire iron as she went.
“So you bastards like picking on little girls? How about taking on a real woman?”
The men tipped their hats, ducked their heads and scurried into the lengthening shadows of the abandoned buildings.
“You okay honey?” Cally asked.
“I’m fine. I just want to get this over with.”
Althea nodded and opened the door.
The door opened with an agonizing creak from arthritic hinges and a tinkling of rusty silver bells. The room was darker than she expected and surprisingly unoccupied except for a boy standing at the counter who was not much younger than herself. He ignored her as he put away radiator hoses. Althea stepped up, rang the little bell on the desk and said, “I’m here to see Mr. Winthrop.”
“I’m Mr. Winthrop,” the boy squeaked, “how can I help you?”
Althea found herself looking into the face of a boy who looked remarkably like her. They had the same oval face, the same dark eyes and arching eyebrows. His hands were like hers too, she noted and realized with stunning horror that she was face to face with her half brother.
“I’m—” She stopped, cleared her throat, realizing that the monster hiding somewhere inside the store was actually a human being, someone who had married and had children. Sure, she knew that to be true, because Cally said he was married, that he was a businessman and a big wig on the city council and wanted to be governor and all that jazz. But to stand across the counter from someone you knew with all your heart was connected to you by blood, well, that made things a little different. No, she amended; it makes things a lot different. Can I go through with this now? She wondered. It hadn’t occurred to me that I could be hurting other people in the process. His wife, his son and whatever other kids he might have fathered over the course of eighteen years. They didn’t have anything to do with this. They probably don’t even know.
And yet, there was no flicker of recognition on the young man’s face. Whatever family resemblance there was between them was lost on him.
“What’s your name, boy?” she whispered.
“Tony.”
“I’m looking—” She paused again. Tony’s eyebrows went up. She cleared her throat and said, “I’m looking for old man Winthrop. Jimmy Winthrop.”
“That’s my dad. Why?” he asked looking suspicious. “What’s he done?”
“What hasn’t he done?” she laughed.
Tony didn’t laugh.
“I have to talk to him that’s all.”
“Any particular reason why you can’t say it to me instead of him?”
“Because honey,” she said, feeling her sass return, “what I have to say to him would scald out your ears.”
Tony gave her a bored disdainful look. “You’re another one of his floozies aintcha?”
“Not on your life, kid,” Althea snapped. “I have business with him. Honest business,” she emphasized when she saw the doubtful expression on his face.
“Dad,” Tony shouted. “Some broad is here to see you.”
“Amanda?”
“Fuck if I know.” He looked back at her with a questioning gaze.
Althea nodded.
“Don’t’ curse in front of the lady, son.”
“She ain’t no lady.”
“Is it Amanda or not?”
Again, Althea nodded.
“Yeah,” Tony said, sounding bored.
“Send her on back,” came the muffled reply.
‘Thanks,” she said to Tony. She gave him a final passing glance, and headed towards the back of the store.
After passing dozens of shelves and long aisles filled with incidental objects, she came to a door at the back of the shop. It was a narrow door, haphazardly paneled, with a brass knob. A crooked sign swinging from a peg at eye level stated “employees only.” This is it, she told herself. Gathering up her courage, she knocked on the door.
“Come in.”
The scent of the room struck her first. It virtually reeked of stale perfume and something she couldn’t identify. Something sinister, she decided. As Althea stepped into the office she noticed a badly done Lana Turner look-alike sitting cross-legged on a chair in front of the desk. She had a steno book in one hand and was looking somewhat befuddled as Althea made her way deeper into the office.
The room itself had a shabby lived in quality. It had the standard office equipment; a typewriter perched in the corner on a narrow desk that the secretary (at least Althea assumed that’s what the woman was) worked. The larger desk at the back of the room was cluttered with paper, empty cigarette packs and stacks of invoices spilling out from an overworked inbox.
Jimmy Winthrop sat behind the desk, his long thin hands resting on the edges, as if he were about to rise. The man himself might have been handsome once, Althea conceded, but that had been a long time ago. Now she faced a portly little runt of a man with a receding hairline, wearing thick horn-rimmed glasses and a dingy, gravy stained shirt.
So this is the monster who deflowered my mother in the back seat of his Desoto all those years ago. She snorted. He’s not much. He’s not scary at all. He’s just...pathetic.
Turning to the presumed secretary Althea said, “Beat it, toots.”
“How dare you?” the Lana Turner look-alike said.
“Who the hell are you?” Jimmy Winthrop demanded. “You ain’t Amanda.”
Without further ado, Althea grabbed the shady looking secretary by her bleached blonde hair and threw her out the door. She slammed the door shut, and finding a little latch beneath the door knob, she flipped it, effectively locking them in.
Her father had risen now, his tie drooping into a cup of coffee as he leaned forward, his mouth gaping. He looked ludicrous, like a bass on a stringer.
Althea strode up to him and leaned over the desk, so closely that her nose almost touched his.
“Hello Daddy dearest,” she said.
“I have no idea who you are young lady,” he replied, reaching toward the phone, “but you’re getting out of here before I throw you out.”
Althea snatched the phone from him, surprised at the ease in which it slipped out of his hand. She ripped the handset free from the phone’s body and tossed it into a pile of invoices, its cord lying like a half coiled snake against the handset.
Mr. Winthrop stood fully, his face turning purple. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
“I’m here to have a little chat with you,” Althea said, as she noticed Mr. Winthrop starting to make his way around the cramped desk and toward her. “And don’t dream of trying to lay a hand on me, either. This ain’t the 1930’s bub, and we ain’t in the back seat of a Desoto. If you try anything I’ll scream rape so loud and so hard you’ll be Methuselah before you see the light of day again.”
“We’ll just see about that,” Winthrop hissed as he tried to push his way past her. She pushed him backwards and he landed with a deep harrumph into his secretary’s seat. Years of her rowing up and down the bayou, plus long walks to and from town had made Althea whip tough, whereas almost two decades of Winthrop sitting on his ass had turned the high school football legend into a marshmallow.
“I know you don’t know who I am,” Althea began as she stood in front of the desk looking down at her father. “But I do believe you’re familiar with a Miss Ruby Marie Thibodaux.”
“I can’t say I am,” Winthrop replied as he pulled out a grayish handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the sweat from the bald patch which was now turning an uncomfortable shade of reddish purple.
“Oh, I think you do,” Althea said, as she sat on the edge of the desk, pushing off a pile of papers as she did so. “I’m sure you do. Think back. Think real hard, to a night back in 1938. You being the all star football player destined to go to LSU, and a little fifteen year old girl you deflowered just because you could and knew the town wouldn’t do squat about it.”
“What about it?” Winthrop asked. “She asked for it. She—”
“I thought you said you didn’t know her.”
“Okay I knew her. I took the girl out once, okay? She was all over me. She wouldn’t stop begging so I did it, okay? Is that what you want to hear?”
“No,”
Althea admitted, “but that’s what I expected to hear. Do you have any idea the kind of life that little girl had after you did what you did? Do you even care?”
“Look,” Winthrop said, “I knew Ruby. I admit that. I admit we had a date. Only one date and she came on to me. I gave her what she wanted. How was I supposed to know or even care about what happened afterward?”
Althea slammed her fist down hard on the desk, hard enough to disrupt another mound of paperwork, plus slosh cold coffee from its cup and onto the desk.
“I’m what happened afterwards you nasty little scutt! I’m what happened.”
She tilted her head, and then enjoyed the look of sickening shock on his face as he flopped backwards into the chair.
“Hence, the phrase, Hi Daddy,” she hissed. “Remember, that’s what I said when I came in?”
“I know what you said and I don’t believe a word of it.”
“A blood test would prove that I’m telling the truth.”
“A blood test?” He laughed. “That’s rich. Even if you could afford one it wouldn’t prove a thing. Those stupid blood tests are inaccurate and you know it.”
“Well,” Althea said, feeling elated. “It doesn’t matter does it? I’ll go and tell your wife. It’s Dolores, isn’t it? I’ll let her know about the little mishap you had with my mother, and Delores will notice the family resemblance between me and Tony-boy out there—” she said indicating her half brother tending the counter
“—and how I was the direct result of that little escapade you had with my mother on homecoming night. I’ll tell her everything, right down to how you threatened to beat her into a miscarriage if she didn’t get an abortion.”
Winthrop blanched. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“I can and I will,” Althea said. “I’ll tell her everything, about me, my mother, and that barely legal putain you’ve been keeping. I know you think you’re the next Huey P. Long, but you’re not. You’re just a pathetic little man who treats women like filth. Oh, I can’t wait. I’ll give her the goods all right. I’ll let her know in no uncertain terms what a washed up piece of trash you really are. Then I’ll go to the city council and—”
Wild Swans Page 26