Marvel stared at Harold. “It could work,” she blurted.
IT COULD WORK, but everything had to go right.
Longstreet was six hours down the river. We did two hours that night and anchored behind the point of a sandbar. I hadn’t shaved since we left St. Paul, and the beard was coming on.
“There’re too many white whiskers in it,” LuEllen said. “Writers have white beards; painters are supposed to have black. I’ve never seen a movie where the painter had a white beard.”
“I look like Hemingway,” I suggested. “Except taller and better-looking, of course.”
The next morning I added to the effect with my artist outfit: tan baggy-assed shorts, Portuguese rope sandals, a New York Knicks T-shirt, and a broad-brimmed canvas hat. LuEllen admired the outfit extravagantly. During the final run down the river she fell into periodic bursts of the giggles. I put it down to stress. We arrived at Longstreet at eleven o’clock and eased into the ramshackle marina I’d seen on my first trip down.
The marina operator wore a cap that said “Port Captain.” He had an easy, sun-lined face that hadn’t seen much of anywhere and didn’t much care.
“How y’ doin’?” he asked cheerfully. He took a quick look at me and a longer one at LuEllen. LuEllen was wearing a beige sundress that had a pattern of small rectangular holes across the bodice. There was no indication that she was burdened by a brassiere.
“Pretty good,” I admitted. “You got hookups?”
“Sure do,” he said. “Y’all planning to stay awhile?”
I hopped up on the dock. “Maybe a week, maybe two, it depends,” I said. Up in the town I could see the tops of Victorian-era clapboard houses lapping around the edges of the business district. “I’m a painter. Last time I came through here, I saw some nice landscape.”
As soon as I said the word painter, his eyes shifted, and I figured we’d be paying in advance.
“I’m sure there is,” he said.
“How about if I give you a week in advance? If it works out, we’ll give you another week.”
My stock went back up. He hadn’t had to ask for the money, and we had avoided an awkwardness. “That’d be fine,” he said. “It’s fifty cents a foot, up to twenty dollars a day, with another dollar for every person over four?”
There was a question in his voice, and LuEllen said, “There are only the two of us.”
“So that’s twenty dollars a day for seven days; that’d be a hundred and forty dollars,” I said. I took out a pad of traveler’s checks. “Do you take American Express?”
AT THE MEMPHIS MEETING, we’d talked about how we’d bring ourselves to the attention of the mayor in the most natural way. Harold suggested that we catch her during lunch.
“She eats a political lunch every day, with the city attorney or the city clerk and maybe one or two other people,” Harold said. “You could bump into her there at the restaurant.”
We paid the marina operator, and he moved us to a permanent slip. While the two of us did the phone, power, and sewage hookups, LuEllen went back into the houseboat to make a quick addition to her wardrobe. When we walked up the levee into town, she was wearing a slender, glistening quartz crystal the size of my little finger, wrapped in gold wire and strung around her neck on an antique gold chain. The crystal rested between the swell of her breasts, the swell provided by her new uplift bra. You’d have to be blind to miss it. The crystal, not the bra.
Most of the Mississippi River valley below Memphis had been wiped out by the great flood of 1927. In rebuilding, a lot of towns turned their backs on the river, fortifying themselves behind the levees. Some of them simply picked up and moved away from the water altogether.
Longstreet hadn’t been hurt as badly as other places. The residential heart of Longstreet was on naturally high ground. When the flood came, it took out the first couple of blocks of the business and warehouse districts along the river, but most of the town stayed dry. As a result, the rebuilt business district was a collection of redbrick thirties and forties architecture, backed up by a residential area that was much older.
The town square, Chickamauga Park, was on the first major terrace up from the river, at the center of the business district. Two blocks beyond that, the business buildings started shading into the white residential neighborhoods. The white neighborhoods went on up the rising ground, across the crest to the railroad tracks. The black neighborhoods were on the far side of the tracks.
We didn’t get that far. We took our time strolling up the ridge, getting acquainted with the town. It was hot but not yet unpleasant. The mix of river odors and flower perfume was as rich and interesting, in its own way, as new-mown hay.
“Uh, by the way, what’s your name today? Your last name?” I asked.
Across the street, a heavyset woman in a sun-bonnet was tilling a garden with an ancient Case lawn tractor.
“Case,” LuEllen said, watching the woman in her beans. “LuEllen Case, okay?”
“Sure,” I said. “And thank Christ she wasn’t driving an International Harvester.”
The restaurant where the mayor ate lunch was a ferns-and-antique-bricks place called Humdinger’s, down the block from the City Hall. Most of the local movers and shakers would be there between eleven-thirty and one o’clock. I knew the mayor’s face from political advertisements Marvel had sent us, and LuEllen had seen her on the street during her scouting trip. Her face fixed on us as we crossed the street toward the restaurant.
“There she is, like Harold said,” LuEllen murmured.
“I see her. Ballem’s with her,” I said. I took LuEllen’s elbow in my hand as we crossed the street. “There’s an open booth just before theirs. That’s the one we’ll take. You sit closest to the door, so you’re facing her. Let her get a look at that crystal.”
“I’m cool,” she said. I glanced at her, and her face looked dewy from the heat and humidity, but otherwise serene.
“You didn’t put any of that shit up your nose, did you?”
A flash of irritation crossed her face. “That’s only for hard targets,” she said.
“Just checking.”
“You’re not my father.”
“No, but—”
“But what?”
“Nothing.”
Humdinger’s had creaky wooden floors and rough brick walls and framed reproductions of English sporting prints, a place that strained for sophistication without quite making it. The general lunch hour buzz dimmed noticeably when we stepped inside, heads turning in our direction. There was a sign near the cash register, PLEASE WAIT TO BE SEATED. The waitress who came to seat us took a good look at LuEllen, a shorter one at me, decided LuEllen was in charge, and said to her, “This way please.”
We were headed toward the windows, but just to make sure, LuEllen touched the woman on the arm and said, “I wonder if we could have that window booth.”
“That’s where I was taking you, honey,” the waitress said.
I sat in the booth with my back to Dessusdelit, so she could see LuEllen. Even without the sundress, the uplift bra, and the breast exposure, the crystal would have been hard to miss. The light flickering off it made it seem alive.
“She sees it,” LuEllen said in a low voice, around the menu.
LuEllen ordered a chicken breast salad, and I had an open-face hot beef sandwich, which arrived swimming in brown gravy. We talked about painting locations in town, LuEllen worried about the cholesterol in my lunch, and we both tried unsuccessfully to eavesdrop on the booth behind me. I was just finishing the sandwich when I felt the mayor and Ballem slide out of their booth. LuEllen winked.
“I don’t mean to interrupt,” the mayor said, pausing by our table. She was looking at LuEllen. Ballem walked on a few steps before he stopped and turned. “That is a beautiful crystal.”
“Why, thank you,” LuEllen said sweetly. “It’s a Herkimer diamond. My great-great-grandmother found it near her farm in upstate New York.… It’s sort of our family ch
annel—”
“Oh, you’re interested,” Dessusdelit said with enthusiasm. She had a narrow, sallow face framed by a short, dark, thoroughly lacquered hairdo. The bags under her pale eyes seemed fairly new, as though she hadn’t slept for a couple of nights. A chain of braided gold, like LuEllen’s but thinner, hung around her neck. She fished it out. “I have one of my own.…”
Her crystal was bigger than LuEllen’s but not quite as clear. And while LuEllen’s was double-ended, the mayor’s had a rough cleavage at the bottom, where the crystal had been broken off its base.
“From Mount Ida,” she said.
“Oh, sure,” LuEllen said knowledgeably. “They’re famous. Did you collect it yourself, or—”
“Yes, yes, I bothered Ralph, that’s my late husband, I said to Ralph, ‘Ralph, I swear, if you don’t take me, I just don’t know what I’ll do.’ One day he said, ‘Let’s go, girl. Then maybe you’ll leave me alone.’ I looked at crystals until I thought my eyes would fall out. This one just sort of spoke to me, you know?”
“I know exactly, I know,” LuEllen gushed. “Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night just having to hold it. I can actually feel the spheres intersecting through my diamond.… Have you ever tried using a ball?”
“Well, once, when this lady was coming through town, but I didn’t see much. I mean, for a minute—”
Ballem was looking bored and impatient, but LuEllen ignored him. “Did you have a chance to warm it with your touch, or did you just look into it?”
“Well, I touched it, but mostly I just looked.…”
The conversation was getting serious now.
“You should try a ball again. You’ll find it’s different from the crystal, but sometimes it’s… a lot better. Next time roll it in your hands for a while. You have to establish a resonance with the ball… and it has to be real. The more a ball’s used, the more open it gets.…”
“I don’t know if I could find, just offhand… they’re expensive, the good ones.”
“Well…” LuEllen looked at me, as though for permission, “I have an antique ball down in our river yacht. You’d be welcome to come down and try… I mean, if you’re really an enthusiast…”
Dessusdelit looked from LuEllen to me, and her voice took on just an edge of wariness. We were moving too fast for the Old South. “Are you… staying in town?”
“We’re down at the marina. You can see the big white river yacht down there. My name is LuEllen Case. Mr. Kidd’s a painter, and he’s here scouting landscapes. I’m just along… for the ride.”
“So you’re not from around here?” But her voice had warmed a notch. We had a large boat.
“No, no. Mr. Kidd has homes in St. Paul and New Orleans. We travel back and forth so he can work on his painting.”
“Well, that sounds very nice.” Dessusdelit had definitely warmed back up, though the wariness lingered. We were Yankees, after all, and apparently living in sin. Of course, I did have two houses and a yacht.… “I’m Chenille Dessusdelit, and this is Archibald Ballem. I’m the mayor here, and Archie is the city attorney.”
Ballem made a little scrape and bow. From a distance you might think he was sixty. Up close you realized he was probably ten years younger than that, but his face had a dissolute crepe-paper texture, and his nose had the swollen, big-pored quality of a heavy drinker. His eyes, small, sharp, and mean, dispelled any illusion that he was a dumb hick lawyer.
It was time I got into the discussion.
“If it’s all right to change the subject for a minute, maybe you can help me,” I said. “I’m looking for views… you know, overlooks of the town, where I can see some of those beautiful Victorian mansions and still have some sweep of the land.…”
Dessusdelit looked toward Ballem, and Ballem’s eyes narrowed even further. “Up by the Trent place, you know where that big old oak tree is right on the edge of the hill.”
“That would be wonderful,” Dessusdelit said, turning to me. “There are several places up there. Excuse me, could I sit for just a moment?”
LuEllen moved over, and Dessusdelit perched on the end of the bench seat and took a silver pen and small pad of paper from her purse. “Now this is Front Street,” she said. “If you walk south on Front to Longstreet Boulevard and then turn left…”
She gave us directions out to the Trent place, which was perhaps ten blocks from the center of town. I asked about the possibility of renting a car for a couple of weeks.
“Well, Mary Wells’s brother—she’s our city clerk—has the Chevrolet dealership here. I believe he rents used cars off the lot—”
“He does,” said Ballem.
They gave us directions to the Chevrolet dealer, and Dessusdelit and LuEllen agreed the mayor would visit the next morning to look at the crystal ball. Dessusdelit was just getting up to leave when we had one of those odd encounters that happen from time to time. The door opened, and a man stepped in. Dark-haired, dark-complected, he was wearing a white straw hat, a light cotton sports jacket over a T-shirt, faded blue jeans, and loafers. He started down the aisle headed toward the back, said, “Hello, Archibald,” to Ballem, and then saw Dessusdelit sitting next to us.
“’Lo, Chenille,” he said. His eyes moved on to LuEllen, paused, and then to me. He started slowly past, but Dessusdelit stopped him. “You’ll be there, Lucius? We’re votin’ on the pool improvements.”
“Of course.”
“It’s important. You may be the tiebreaker.”
“I realize that, ma’am, and I shall be there, as always.”
Dessusdelit remembered her manners. “Lucius, this is Miz Case and Mr. Kidd. Mr. Kidd is a painter, and they are going through to New Orleans, on the river. Mr. Kidd plans to stop and work here for a few days… and this is a member of our city council, Lucius Bell.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Bell said. He had been politely trying to stare down LuEllen’s sundress until Dessusdelit mentioned our names, and then his eyes fixed on me. “Are you the fellow represented by the Cale Gallery in New Orleans?”
“Uh, yeah, as a matter of fact.” I was startled by the question.
“I believe I have one of your paintings hanging on my dining room wall,” Bell said.
My mouth was hanging open. I’d never before blindly bumped into someone who owned one of my paintings.
“Are you serious?” I said.
“Sunrise, Josie Harry Bar Light 719.5,” he said.
“Jeez, that’s a good one,” I said. “How’s it holding up? I mean, to look at?”
“I still like it,” he said with a thin grin. “You’re welcome to come over and have a look.…”
“I’d like to do that,” I said. I turned to LuEllen. “It’s a good one.”
“They’re like children,” she explained to Dessusdelit, whose head had been swiveling between Bell and me. “He hates to let them go.”
“Give me a call when you want to come. I’m home most weekday evenings, except council, nights,” Bell said. He borrowed Dessusdelit’s pen and wrote his phone number on the paper next to the map. “And you’d be most welcome, too, Ms. Case. Anytime.”
LuEllen clapped her hands, and I thought she looked a little like Alice in Wonderland. “What a good town,” she said. “And we’ve been here only a couple of hours.”
BALLEM HAD A good eye. The Trent place was a white clapboard Victorian castle with turrets and stunning bay windows. Brick-colored pots of scarlet geraniums were spotted along the railing of a wide front porch. A natural-wood swing hung from chains at the closed end of the porch, and a healthy old bridal wreath hedge grew up from the foundation below. Peonies were spotted around the yard, among the carefully placed oaks, and in back, a grape trellis was already loaded with wide, shiny leaves. The whole thing was surrounded by an antique wrought-iron fence. From the boulevard you could look diagonally across the street and take in the house, the yard, and the sweep of the river below.
I’d rented a three-year-old sta
tion wagon from the Chevy dealer and hauled my painting gear up the hill to start working on my reputation. I hadn’t expected much; I’d figured on a mildly picturesque view of the city. What I got was more subtle and more difficult, reminiscent of several Winslow Homer paintings of the Caribbean, with the splashes of red geraniums against the white clapboard and the green river valley below.
When I found the right spot, I unloaded a French easel, set it up on the boulevard, and put out my water buckets. Then I sat down in the grass with a sketch pad and began blocking out possibilities. I’d been working for a half hour when an elderly lady in a sweatsuit and Nike running shoes strode out through the porch door, through the gate in the wrought-iron fence, and across the street.
“Painter, huh?” she asked cheerfully.
“Yeah. I suppose you get a few of them,” I said. “It’s a heck of a view.”
“We get a few. Local amateurs,” she said. She shaded her eyes and peered down at the sketch pad. I’d made notes on a dozen or so pages, figuring out the moves I’d make when I got the painting going. At the beginning, on a big picture, which I’d decided this might be, I intellectualize the process. After I’ve figured everything out with a pencil, I go to the paint. Then it usually takes three or four tries before I get it. “Chenille Dessusdelit called and said I might see you. She said you were OK.”
“That was nice of her.”
“Well, you like to know who’s on your street,” she said.
“Sure… Look, my name is Kidd, and after I get done with this—it’ll take me a few days—I might knock on your door and ask if I can set up someplace in your yard. I’d like to get a better shot at that bridal wreath with the geraniums.”
“That’d be fine. I’m Gloriana Trent. I’m home most mornings. If I’m not, go ahead and set up,” she said. Then, just as abruptly as she arrived, she said her good-byes and left, striding away with the determined stretch of a speed walker. Too much of the time, when I’m working outdoors, people linger, curious about the painting process. It can drive you crazy, trying to work with somebody looking over your shoulder.
Kidd and LuEllen: Novels 1-4 Page 31