The Do-Right

by Lisa Sandlin

  Phelan already knew the strip-like museum tacked onto the J&J Steakhouse was not a comfy spot for conversation. Parents went on in to order their T-bones, get some peace while kids gawked at The Eye of the World, a boggling display of miniature people, animals, and architecture whittled by one of owners.

  He siphoned himself off from the entrance with its smiling hostess and stepped through a door labeled Museum into a corridor two feet wide. One wall was the showcase: dioramas behind plate glass. Two rows of Bible stories enacted by orange-crate-wood figures, topped by other cutout citizens along with non-scale birds, camels, and sheep populating the Statue of Liberty, the Parthenon, and the Tower of Babel. Spires, cupolas, domes galore. Mrs. Elliott was standing, arms folded, by a grand nativity scene arranged in an Alamo-style manger. She wore the charcoal suit and sunglasses. A girl of maybe eight or nine was down at the end, forehead plastered to the glass.

  Phelan handed over the envelope with the photos and studied Mrs. Elliott while she opened it. Same brunette hair with a high sheen, bangs, feathery curls. Straight nose, strong chin. Thick make-up, oranger on her jawline than her white neck. No perfume. In fact, little whiff of anti-perfume, doctor’s office, maybe. She tilted the 8×10s left and right, brought them forward, briefly tipped down the sunglasses. He caught a glimpse of the swampy brown eyes, their rims puffed and redder than before and thought about Lloyd and his girlfriend’s clutch in the parking lot. He felt sorry for her.

  She lifted a briefcase from the brown carpet and put the photos into it. The little girl squeezed by them. Mrs. Elliott waited for her to leave, then held out a white envelope, a notable quiver in her grasp. “Your secretary quoted me the total amount owed. It’s all here, rounded to the dollar. Thank you for your services.”

  The sunglasses confronted him until he understood he was dismissed.

  Wham, bam, you’re welcome, ma’am.

  He nodded and walked past The Last Supper and Solomon’s Temple, out the restaurant’s entrance and into the steamy night.

  The woman he’d met last time had been in a way different mood. Feverish, talky. This one was the curt woman who’d called up their first day. He’d always been fair at reading faces, knew when a guy was likely going to start something or back down—knew without much thinking—and his body readied itself accordingly. Thought everyone did it. Was harder with the dark glasses but what he was reading with Mrs. Elliott was not distaste or disappointment. It was impatience. She wanted to get this picture show on the road.

  He slid into his car and waited. She’d have to pass him to get back out on the street.

  Families went by, couples. Car doors slammed. She never came out.

  He got out, smiled at the hostess and scanned faces in the restaurant. Exited and strode behind the J&J to a dumpster and some patched blacktop. Flatbed parked back here. Crates and boxes. Weeds. Line of woods directly to the west and damned if there wasn’t a cut for a street that ran off through there.

  Ditched me. Do I not like that.

  He stood sweating behind the steakhouse. A short guy in an apron banged out the back screen door, cigarette already in his mouth. Slapped his pockets then raised his face to Phelan as if to a deck officer passing out life jackets.

  Phelan tossed him a matchbook from Leon’s.

  Well. Unfair as it is to you and misguided as they are, everyone cannot love Tom Phelan. Your second case is finished. Get the money to the bank.

  In the morning, Miss Wade counted the bills in the envelope Phelan handed her and block-printed a deposit slip for State National Bank. Then she looked up and listened to the story of the payoff.

  Phelan strolled around a while and came back. “Know anything about wigs?”

  “Little.”

  “’Scuse me, but how?”

  Her eyes flicked toward him then away. “Woman I knew, her hair came out in fistfuls. She got her mother to send her a wig cause she didn’t want a answer to Cueball or Baldylocks.”

  “Tell me how a wig looks different than real hair.”

  “Well, less they’re wore out, they look shiny. And all the hair’s one same color, no streaks or anything.” She ran a hand through her own ash brown hair. Some of the strands were lighter, sunnier than others. Phelan leaned over. Her hair smelled like lemons.

  “You don’t see any scalp, just this seam of hair, and it’s better they have bangs cause if they don’t the hairline looks like the end of a kitchen table.”

  “Mrs. Elliott has brunette hair like that. Bangs. Very shiny.”

  “And?”

  “And…and I don’t know. You just have the phone number for her, right?”

  “Yeah. That one she’ll answer on Tuesdays or Fridays at eight in the morning. Before she has to go to work. She says. We got no address for her.”

  “Lloyd’ll be in the book.” Phelan strolled a few more steps, stopped and glanced back at her. “Thanks for saying ‘we.’”

  He got a stare followed by a nod. He hesitated, feeling on delicate ground, tapped his pencil. After a while, shooting her a glance, he asked, “You know any blackmailers, Miss Wade?”

  She’d been starting to smile, but her head went down then.

  Silence floated like a buoy between them.

  “Of the people I meet these days, Mr. Phelan, you and Joe Ford and Miss Doris and Calinda Blanchard know I been in prison. ‘Cept for Mr. Ford, that has to, they hadn’t found more than one occasion to refer to it. You need to know something I learned from my past, ask me straight out. I’ll tell you. Just don’t act like my slip is showing.”

  If Phelan’d had the hammer from the P.I. kit in his trunk, he’d have whacked himself with it. “That’s a pact,” he said softly.

  She looked off toward the window as she spoke. “We’re dealing with a wife don’t trust her husband here but, in case she’s taking somebody else for a ride, you don’t want it to be us.”

  Phelan raised his index finger together with the one middle finger he had left and tipped them both toward his secretary.

  “OK then,” she said. “Blackmailers. Some just see a chance. But the other kind think you got something that’s theirs. May be true. But it don’t have to be, that doesn’t matter. May be some piddly thing. In prison it gets real piddly. May not even be a thing, just your attention or some favor they think they deserve. What matters is they get what they want. They win. You don’t. You do not win. Only thing that matters. Understand?”

  “Got it. Thanks. Mrs. Elliott’s out to win, I can believe that. It’s what she wants to win that I’m not too clear about.” He was walking around. Stalling. Why was he doing that? He slipped his hands in his pockets.

  “OK then. Say hello to Debbie at the bank.”

  “Think Debbie would ruther you say your own hello’s. Just a idea I got.”

  Debbie had greeted him the day he went in to open a business account, and Phelan had recognized her right away, bleached hair and all. After the army, Phelan had spent a lot of down time with Debbie McClary, partying across the Louisiana line at The Oaks or The Pelican Club or lying zonked on Crystal Beach. In those days her dark hair had been stiff with salt water. Him with sand in his crack, a cooler with beers bobbing, the waves rushing like erasers over Phelan’s mind.

  “Debbie’s an old friend from a lost time,” he said. “Why don’t you take the rest of the day off, Miss Wade. I’m going to.”

  XIV

  HAVING A DAY, and having the day off—like having fudge icing on top of pecan pie. Back at the New Rosemont, she asked Calinda did she have anything to fish with. Calinda went and pried open a door at the end of a corridor, rooted around. The storeroom inside was a treasury of broke-down furniture and headless lamps, lame floor sweepers, yellow stacks of papers jumbled one over another—could have been a lease for the Lucas gusher itself in there somewhere leveling up a bedstead that last saw happy action during Prohibition. The rattling and prying went on for some time. Finally, batting webs out of her stubby hair, she heisted out a pole
with some line on it.

  Held out the keys to her ’55 Ford, too. “Bus doesn’t take you to fishing holes. You know how to drive?”

  Half-smile from Delpha. “I can’t wait to remember. You got a hat, Miss Blanchard?”

  Miss Blanchard did, a straw with a wide brim for shade. In return, she wanted Delpha to do some grocery shopping for the hotel.

  Delpha considered driving all the way down to Rollover Pass, putting her cane in the water and letting the Gulf’s salt air soften her thoughts. But she ended up rubbing 6-12 on her arms, hands, neck, and face, rolling down the long plaid sleeves of her Goodwill shirt and heading for a bayou. She bought a container full of worms and three hours with a squat little boat and outboard.

  A lank-haired white woman wearing overalls over a tank top took her money, then plopped down in an aluminum lawn chair, hauled up onto her lap a blond thumb-sucker with a doll, and turned back to the black and white TV flickering behind the counter. Another blond girl, older, maybe ten, jumped up from behind the counter, flapping a coloring book and crayon, making sounds at the woman, who raised two fingers and snapped them downward. The girl’s face crumpled. She made a fist and rolled it repeatedly at the woman. The thumb-sucker copied her sister, letting go of the doll in order to wiggle her fist in the mother’s face.

  The mother snuck a sideways glance at Delpha, mumbled, “They cain’t hear.” She made a waving-off motion. The older girl imitated that, her face questioning. The mother rolled a fist at her. The blond girl grinned. She and the coloring book disappeared behind the counter. Delpha said, “Bye-bye,” made her own wave. The littler girl popped the thumb from her mouth and waved bye-bye, big, open-mouthed smile. Nothing from the other one.

  Delpha walked out to the dock and chose a boat. None of them looked perky.

  She yanked the cord, and the Evinrude bucked up. Hadn’t known if she could stand being out here, but now—just riding over the brown water eased a clench in her stomach. She wound around the channels, minding her direction, the bowing willow there, stand of reeds and cattails, ahead some cypress she veered right to avoid. She cut the engine and as the boat eased on a ways of its own silent accord, the insect-singing—the bugs, the frogs, the locusts, the whole chittering, clicking, sawing, whirring choir—descended over her like a lofted sheet on its airy way back down.

  Delpha let out a breath that felt fourteen years trapped. May be that these bayou channels weren’t wide as two-lane. May be the trees folded over and clutched, paring the sky to a high blue strip, thickening the green shadows. She could hear laughter floating back over the water, a kid’s yell. Didn’t matter. She couldn’t see them.

  Alone. A better alone even than in the hotel where there were walls and people noise. Noises everywhere out here, but they added up to one big quiet. There was no next cell, next door, next hall, line up, count off, lay down, shut up, lights go out, lights flip on. No concrete in sight, no khaki guard with B.O.-black armpits, no potato peel to scrape off linoleum with your thumbnail, no reek and burn of bleach. Nobody griping, fighting, crying in the night, lying, spinning such backwards bullshit sometimes you’d wrap your arms around the poor woman and hold her until she just ran out of it. More times you wanted to bust her skull with a ladle for the soul-nourishing crunch of it. Make her quit that sweetie wishy voice or the chin-out bragging one. Man got her in here would not be shifting one foot to the other waiting for her when they let her out. Kids she hadn’t seen in seven years wouldn’t holler Mama and come flinging to her. Hell, they grew up without her and they got accounts too. God, no thigh fat jamming hers on a dining hall bench, no screaming overhead light, no used Kotex smeared across a bathroom wall so a finger could write in it.

  Delpha opened the cardboard container full of dirt and reddish veins. Pulled out a rubbery worm and dropped it into the bayou. Little fish head appeared, big old mouth, nipped it down. If she’d stayed in her room, she’d have paced around. Here she could breathe air. She dropped in another worm, to see the splash and the rings. Did this for a while, fed the fish.

  Fourteen years without touch save a few women with chapped hands, a shoulder-patting chaplain, and a fat guard captain who liked to make her lay over a desk in the furniture supply room, liked to say, What you gone do, kill me?

  She set the faded orange life preserver down in the boat and sat on it, leaned her elbows back on the wood seat. Drifted some, paddled a couple times so the line would drag the water. Sky and water and the keening of presence. Pole-tall pines and bending willow and the yaupon and the slim grasses of the land were here, grasses that bowed and nodded and stood. The stirring water and all the swimmers singers flyers burrowers and twiners, sun spot prying through the brim of Calinda Blanchard’s straw hat. A splash and rings of water.

  Eventually she threaded a worm on the hook. Careful not to hang up in the reeds, she tossed out her line. By the time the sun was slanting, she had dropped back a few baby bream and caught three fair-size bass. Plastic bucket in the boat. She put them in that. She was sitting top of the seat by then, water sloshing in the boat bottom had soaked her tennies. Egret in the reeds. Mosquito whine. She was about to start the Evinrude when a broad stick drifted by. Only it wasn’t a stick, it was a gator submerged past the eyes. She jerked the cord, the motor ground, sputtered and caught, loud. The egret lifted off flapping, coasted to another landing farther down the bank. The stick put on a spurt of speed, away down the brown channel.

  End of her fishing day. Two dollar deposit for Delpha to collect, somebody’s kids popping up and down hollering RC Cola and Eskimo pie, a teenager and a couple of sweaty men with six packs weighing down their arms. The woman with the deaf kids was not behind the counter.

  It was an old man in stained khakis, a flat ball cap low on his forehead.

  Not long after somebody hits you in the mouth, your lips swell tight. Maybe the skin splits, maybe it holds, but it burns so that every second you are aware of it like you are never aware of skin. That was happening to Delpha, all over.

  The old man yawned in her face as he pushed her deposit across the counter. To a fisherman blustering about having to bail his leaky boat, he said You knew it was a piece of shit you got in it. Git outa here, pal, go git you a ocean liner. His hand ranged under the counter and the customer left grumbling but the counterman’s voice—which Delpha, stepped back, the two bills crushed in her hand, had been waiting to hear—was bored. Bored, the threat in it a tired habit. She stepped back up, scooped a peanut patty from the shelves underneath the counter. Eyes rolling past her, he handed her ninety cents change. There was the scar. Where it should be, starting at the wrist and rising, the way the veins ran. Where she put it.

  He stooped to get some Redman for the teenage boy. The back of his neck was crosshatched, cheeks flabby, neck skin dragging. His speckled arms were burned brown except for the raised white scar underside of the arm.

  This old man had claimed he tried to stop his boy from hurting her, got cut for his efforts. His word against hers. The cops, the judge, the jury—he pissed down their backs and told them it was raining. What he had done was slammed Delpha’s face into the plank floor, raped her and turned loose his son. That son. The son straddled her back, gripped up her hair and carved into her neck. Each line a long sting that did not abate and a warm falling off to either side. Punched her in the head when she struggled. Did that till he was hard enough, flipped her and climbed on top. Bucked and slammed but he couldn’t come, couldn’t come.

  Then finally a stuttering grunt burst from him and his eyes rolled back. Fingers slacked apart, and he lost his hold on the knife. Delpha had had to skin it across her throat to grip it in her right hand. The blade was facing toward him or she’d have cut her own throat.

  Headlights raked across a window. The old man’d jumped after the knife. Blade up like that, she’d dug, opening his arm wrist to elbow. He’d lurched back, and the son rared up—she stuck it into his chest. The young man made that knuckly fist again, but he was only
swatting. Rolled onto his back, said “Daddy.” The old one looked at him, but then he ran.

  There are true words for a place and a time—like funeral words, promises, gratitude, apology words. Remorse was a parole-board word. Those two men’d had a gun, she’d have been in the bayou fifteen years. There was nothing in her world truer than that.

  She was in the old groove, the old When and How. She turned the Ford into Weingarten’s Grocery, harked briefly to a voice coming from a car in the next parking space, jawing about owning a ’55 Ford too, and how it ran for a hundred forty thousand miles…Delpha walked off. The three fish she caught were wrapped in newspaper on the front seat: she couldn’t tarry.

  Five loaves of Rainbo bread, four dozen eggs, margarine, four packages of bacon, two giant-size cans of Folger’s. She pulled it all off the shelves like she was fighting somebody for it.

  Her arms were full with the two sacks. Out by the store doors, a little girl in dirty pink shorts and impetigo legs was parked on a galloping horse machine still pretending to ride the thing after her quarter was spent. Leaning toward her was a smiler in a short-sleeved shirt offering out a box of gumdrops.

  “This your child?”

  The guy straightened up, gripping his affable expression, his ground. Thought maybe he could smile her by, let him get back to it.

  “Have some gumdrops ’fore they all stick together, young lady.”

  Delpha’s head was shaking No.

  “All y’all,” she said. “Ever goddamn one. Playing like you ain’t a rattler. You just ain’t been stepped on yet.”

  His nice smile flatlined, and he slid away down the sidewalk.

  She set her brown paper sacks down on the hot concrete, lifted the little girl off the saddle of the butterscotch-colored horse with the bucky teeth, carried her on her hip into Weingarten’s. She seated the child on the Customer Service counter and told the manager to call the mother on his loudspeaker. The young man plucked a quarter from his pocket, said, like it was bonus points for her Green Stamps book, “On us. Let the little buckaroo ride some more.”