By her head, Hugh noticed a glass skunk he’d owned for years, wobbling on the night table next to the wine glasses. Paula had given him the skunk after a weekend tryst in Galveston, nearly ten years ago, before they were married. They’d gone crabbing that Saturday, using chicken necks as bait to entice the crabs, who’d scrambled over green and purple pebbles onto blistering sand, and into Paula’s net. He’d seen the skunk in a gift shop on the Strand. It had made him laugh—its big eyes and its pompadour—and she’d bought it for him when he wasn’t looking. She surprised him with it in their beachside motel room. It danced on the bed’s headboard while they made love, a salty breeze riffling the gold curtains around their sliding-glass door, the crabs clattering in a plastic bucket in the bathtub, crammed with chipped, dirty ice.
He missed Paula only intermittently now, though he’d grieved steadily the first year she’d moved back to the Big Easy. Even then, it wasn’t Paula he missed so much as the girls, the reassuring habits they’d established together—cleaning and cooking and gardening. He supposed, now, he hadn’t loved her as much as he’d loved the notion of building a nest and settling in.
But watching the skunk wobble, holding Alice, recalling Paula’s naked body, he felt a pang. He wouldn’t want Paula back, but of all the people on the planet, only Paula knew certain things about him: the way he’d cried the night he’d found a dead bluejay in the yard, one steamy August; his delight when he’d first tasted cilantro at a picnic, just the two of them, on a baseball diamond near Rice; the way he’d laughed when he’d spotted the skunk in the gift shop. Inconsequential moments, hut if not for his memory—and Paula’s—no one could say they had occurred at all.
“Hugh?” Alice whispered.
The bag lady wailed.
He could feel his own heartbeat. And hers. Here. Now. He kissed Alice fiercely.
7.
His best moves were his father-moves: ice cream treats in the middle of the day, an unexpected raise in the girls’ weekly allowance. Granting—or withholding—praise, depending on the girls’ achievements. Once, when Elissa had managed all As in school, his praise had been extravagant. On the other hand, the day Jane shaved the hind legs of a neighbor’s schnauzer with her mother’s electric razor—an impressive achievement, no matter how you viewed it—he thought it best to keep his pride in her ingenuity a secret.
He was his finest self with the girls. With Paula he had been defensive, protective of his time (she could always make his successes seem small—talk about withholding!). When they’d separated, and he’d accepted seeing his daughters only every few months, he hadn’t thought he’d miss much—what could happen in such a short time? But from the start he’d been stunned by the speed of their shifts. He’d drop them off in the fall, and by winter they’d be new creatures altogether. One loose tooth had turned into a gaping chasm in an aching mouth; throbbing joints had stretched into an extra half-inch of height.
Who would they be this summer?
At 9:30 Sunday morning he punched Paula’s number. It was his regular time to speak to the girls. Around dawn, Alice had asked him to take her home. He had hoped for a leisurely breakfast with her. She’d sworn she’d had a good time last night, but she had a lot to do before Monday … yes, yes, of course he could call her. Her stiffness had returned. Self-consciousness after sex, fear of daylight, something. Unable to kid her out of it, he hadn’t tried to talk her into staying.
Now, Jane was saying into the phone, “Daddy, I’m going to be in a play at school.”
“That’s great, baby. Is it a singing play?”
“No.”
“Is it a dress-up play?”
“Daddy. All plays are dress-up plays.”
“I guess so.”
Elissa had learned to play “chest.”
“Chest?”
“You know, kings and queens and pawns?”
“That’s wonderful, honey. How’d you learn?”
“I know how to play, Daddy. I just know, okay?”
“Okay, darling.”
He made no headway with Paula, and after hanging up he felt lonely. He thought of phoning Alice, but calling so quickly would make him seem desperate and pathetic. Was he desperate and pathetic? Still, how could he—or she?—deny how good the sex had been, good enough to feel rare and important?
At a Weingarten’s he bought a New York Times and some orange juice; he went home and made himself some scrambled eggs. Reagan denied the United States was fighting a war in Nicaragua. Hugh dropped the front page in disgust and picked up another section. An article in “Living Arts” said Memphis Minnie, an early blues singer “whose howling, rhythmic calls rose out of the gritty Mississippi Delta cotton fields in the 1920s,” had finally gotten a grave marker in the cemetery at New Hope Baptist Church in Walls, Mississippi, just off Highway 61. When she’d died in ‘73, the “music industry had passed her by, as had any profits from her work,” and she’d been laid in a pauper’s grave. Now, a handful of blues fans—all white—had established a memorial fund to recognize several long-forgotten Southern musicians. Hugh longed to see the Delta again, to hear the old howls. Wouldn’t it be great, he thought, if he could take the girls there?
Outside his kitchen window the kittens romped under the bushes. He heard their loud purrs. He was nearly out of cat food. Now, while he had the day free (except for grading tests, and he could tell already that most of the class had tanked), now might be a good time to check the animal shelter he’d passed last December, when he’d taken the girls to Hobby Airport. He remembered seeing it, and all week he’d been meaning to check it out, to see if it would be a good home for the kittens.
So he did the dishes, then drove out Curry Road. Porno shops, massage parlors, gun stores. Jesus, he’d always hated this part of town, the rent-by-month apartments for cut-rate merchants moving God-knows-what through the Hobby terminal. He was always depressed driving the girls out here to fly home to their mother, and the setting itself saddened him even more. The area reeked of the middle man: the buildings, bland and cheap, as temporary and indifferent as their occupants. Fast food, fast lives, instant entertainment. On the grassy median, a large brown dog lay dead, hit by a car, no doubt. Hugh turned, past a “Five-Minute Wedding Chapel” next to “Nelda’s Super-Hair.” A “Militia Supplies” shop anchored a commercial strip next to a liquor store and three cramped pawnshops. Pickups with Confederate flag stickers circled the lot.
At a gravelly intersection he saw a faded wooden sign; the words were illegible, but maybe it marked the shelter’s path. He couldn’t quite remember where it was. He turned. Sweat stung his eyes. The air smelled of pine and tar from the streets, of rust and filth and waste. He braked hard. The road had ended abruptly. Grit flooded the car, through his window. He felt the heat of the breeze like a light, persistent burn.
In a weedy field in front of him, a bulldozer bashed the roof of a car. The operator tugged the levers, raising the shovel’s arm, then brought it crashing down on the brown and white Toyota. The car lurched; glass exploded from its windshield. No one else was around.
Who was this idiot? A city worker? Why was he destroying an automobile in the middle of a sleazy neighborhood, on the hottest day of the summer? Hugh wanted to yell at him. He stuck his head out the window, and saw, in his side mirror, a bright white building behind him, shaped like a mini-Astrodome.
He kicked his car into reverse, raising umbrellas of dust. The bulldozer beat on the Toyota.
A small sign above the door identified the place as the animal shelter.
Inside, it smelled like a hospital—not antiseptic, exactly; medicinal, full of sickness. The odors seared Hugh’s nose. Wet fur, foul breath, and something else. He sniffed. Of course. A trace of gas. Right away, he knew it had been a mistake to come. How could he have thought of bringing the kittens here?
He lied to the woman at the front desk and said he was searching for a lost cat—he had to offer some excuse now that he was here. She said he could
check the back cages. Animals were kept for a couple of weeks before “we have to put them to sleep.” She led him to a massive metal door with a square glass pane in its center. When the woman tugged the handle, a gust of heat emerged from the hall. Hugh thanked her, then stepped into the suffocating broil.
Floor-to-ceiling black wire cages lined either side of the room. Runnels gouged the red-painted floor. A clear liquid ran through the grooves, smelling faintly like pesticide.
The barking and wailing deafened him. An emaciated German shepherd rushed its cage, gnashed its teeth at him. He fell against the opposite wall and felt a hot wind at his ankles; two toy poodles snapped at his heels. Frayed red ribbons dangled, dirty, from their necks. A large yellow dog lay in a cage by itself. It lifted its head, a rheumy old man.
By the far wall, cats, crowded in cages. A noisy spin-cycle of motion. Hugh hurried out, dizzy—so many “hoo-raws” in the city, even among the animals!—muttering vague excuses to the woman at the desk.
Outside, the bulldozer pummeled the car.
8.
Rap music rattled Dowling Street’s brightly lit projects. He got lucky with Spider. The wiry old drummer was perched on his stoop sucking wine from a jam jar. Hugh killed his engine. “Join you?” he called from the curb. All evening, he’d driven around, feeling helpless: unable to connect with his girls, to reach most of his students (the tests were worse than he’d thought), to help the kittens or the old woman who sometimes shared their bushes.
“Didn’t ’spect you till tomorrow. What brings you?” Spider said. “Bad news? Usually bad news brings a fella ‘round when no one ’specting him.”
“No, not really. Nothing terrible, at least. I’m just a little … unsettled tonight.”
“Hell, I been unsettled since kickin’ down my poor old mama’s womb.” He handed Hugh the wine bottle. The stuff was murky. “I’ll get you a glass.”
Crickets wheedled in the grass. The smell of gin and barbecued chicken tumbled over Hugh from a dim window above Spider’s porch. Down the block, where the shackled black hands peeled on the rough brick wall, a broken police tape flapped like kite string from a tree.
“Had a drive-by earlier this evening,” Spider explained, back with a glass. Hugh poured himself a finger. “Twelve-year-old boy, nicked in the arm.”
Hugh watched the streets for the Mustang.
“Why someone want to eighty-six a twelve-year-old boy?”
“The other night, some fellows chased me away from the park,” Hugh said. “Seems to be a high degree of territoriality around here.”
“Brothers protecting they turf, you mean? Yeah. Black Magic’s got ’em all stirred up.”
“Who is he?”
“Who is he really, I don’t know. Just some brother with a microphone. But folks see him as a guardian fuckin’ angel. Defendin’ our occupied streets.”
“Occupied by whites?”
“White money, for sure. Shit, Hugh, let’s not do this tonight, awright man? I’m feelin’ good ‘bout the weekend. I’m obliged to you for nudgin’ me back on stage. Let’s leave it at that. Fair ’nuff?”
“Fair enough. You sounded great. I loved the ‘Shoo-fly’ song.”
“Standard blues juke, nothin’ much, C to C sharp.”
“Sort of non-chordal overall, though? With a 2/4 bar?”
“You learnin’! Ride cymbal keepin’ the beat, leavin’ the bass drum free to bust some chops. Let me ast you, man. Somethin’ you tol’ me while ago. Slaves used to live right here? On Dowling Street? Tha’s on the level?”
“Right here.” The wine tasted like lighter fluid.
Spider nodded. “Reason I ast, sometimes I think I can hear ’em. You know? In my head, in the music. Like them old chains just won’t let go. They be talkin’ to me. ‘Spider, man, spin out our hoo-raw. Don’t let it die.’”
“You’re a storyteller,” Hugh said. “You said it yourself, once.”
“Yeah. Tellin’ stories like carryin’ people’s spirits ‘round inside you.”
Someone screamed down the street. Hugh jumped, then realized the noise had been kids playing. He kept an eye on the intersections at either end of the block. “These old spirits, Spider … it’s something I wanted to talk to you about. You know what I’d like to do? I’d like to see where you were born. See the first joints you played.”
“In the Thicket, you mean?”
“Exactly. I’ve been thinking, it’d be great if I could write your personal history—because it parallels the music’s path, from rural to urban, right, from cotton fields to backroom speakeasies—”
“I don’t think you should go there, man. Not on your own. Back in them woods, it’s still—how you put it?—’territorial.’”
“Will you take me, then?”
“When you want to go?”
“Anytime. Now. This week.”
“Shoot!”
“I’m talking a day, maybe two …”
“Mm-hmm. Tell me, this unsettlement you feelin’. It have somethin’ to do with Little Miss Queenie you brung to the Juneteenth party?”
“No, well … sure. A little. And with my classes, I guess, my ex, my girls I don’t know, I feel like getting away. Turning my mind to something else.”
“Turn your ass to gettin’ killed, you go clompin’ ‘round certain hollers in that Thicket. Tell you what, I cain’t take you this week. Since Sat’day, we had offers to play ‘most ever’ night. Mr. Gino’s Lounge. The Club Success. Etta’s. C. Davis Bar-B-Q. And the beauty part is, these black joints. The real thing. Ain’t none of this white slummin’ goin on. No offense, Hugh. But you know what I mean.”
Hugh swallowed the last of his wine. “Lord.” Esophagus-burn. “Listen, if I go looking around those woods, and I come back with questions, will you answer them?”
Spider held out his hand. Hugh shook it.
“Meantime, you better get straight wit’ your womens,” Spider said. “And watch your skinny ass.”
“I hear you, man.” The wine had left him gasping. “I sure do hear you.”
9.
On Monday his students were noisy, eager to see their grades, secretly thrilled (like wild ponies) by the threatening weather outside. The classroom was muggy, smelling of chalk and damp cotton clothing. Hugh set the test folder on the seminar table. About a quarter of the class had failed. Basic world history. He passed out the exams and waited quietly while the students read their results. Much shifting, creaking of chairs. The Asians rolled their eyes in pleasure or disappointment; the Latins straightened vainly or sank; the Arabs showed nothing.
Thunder slammed the building’s walls.
With this particular class, he had never used his world map exercise. There hadn’t been time—the summer term was short. Now, with so many of them fretting over their tests, he figured they could use a distraction. “Okay, everybody, tomorrow morning we’ll start drilling again, and I expect you all to be prepared. But for now, I’d like you to get out a blank sheet of paper, and draw me a map of the planet.”
They questioned him, gave him squirrelly looks, but eventually put their exams away and settled down to work. A few moved their pens with fluency and joy, others seemed to fight the simple tools, wristbones rigid on the table. Some became absorbed in their labor, others struggled, tongues wagging.
When they finished, and Hugh asked them to compare their efforts, they were astonished—as he knew they would be—at how different their drawings were.
Africa front and center.
Saudi Arabia at the core.
Lima, Peru—Earth’s navel.
“So,” Hugh said. “Will the real world please stand up?”
They didn’t understand this phrase. “Never mind,” he said. “What does this teach us?”
They agreed that a person’s image of the planet depended on his or her home culture, that national and regional biases blind us to others’ conceptions of the truth.
“And we all have individual biases as well,�
�� Hugh added. “I’ve learned that most of us can’t see our culture—the basic set of assumptions that shapes our strongest beliefs—any more than a fish can see the bowl it’s swimming in.”
“My teacher.” Karim, a young Tunisian, waved his hand. “I think maybe it means something more.”
“Yes?” Hugh smiled at him. Karim was one of the best students, naturally friendly and charming.
“I think maybe it means …” He worked his mouth around the clumsy sounds he wanted to express, as if anything he said—as if language itself—would be woefully inadequate. “The world? She is, perhaps, unknowable.”
Back in his office after class, Hugh tried to phone Alice but her secretary said she’d called in that morning. Hugh tried her at home but got only her machine. Was she sick or had Saturday night upset her so much she’d taken to hiding out? He heard Spider again: sen-si-tive. “I hope you’re okay,” he said into the receiver. “Please call me. I’d like to see you again. I believe, next time, we can find a safe part of town. Promise.”
But already, in mind-drifting moments, he’d been planning a trip to the Thicket. As he’d told Spider, Saturday had strengthened his desire to see Spider’s roots, to prove to himself he could enter the world of the blues, and not be chased away. Yes, yes, why not … but first, he thought, he had to fix his own backyard.
His light flickered and went out. He punched Paula’s number, but the girls were staying with a friend. She said he’d have to call them back. He didn’t feel like arguing, just now, about his visit, so he hung up. He called and left a message with the department secretary, saying he’d be gone the next two days. Personal business. His students were taken care of—they had their next assignment. He drove home, packed his toothbrush and a change of clothes. He left two plates of cat food in the bushes. The kittens stared at him suspiciously. He checked his watch. Good. The restaurant would just be opening for supper. A quick bite—quick, before he changed his mind—then he’d hit the road.
It Takes a Worried Man Page 20