The Up-Down

by Barry Gifford

  “You sure that truck will make it to Atlanta?”

  “Drives better than it looks. I got a job waitin’ on me there.”

  “Daddy’s a minister in the First Ethiopian Church of the Queen of Sheba. He’s gonna preach and I’m gonna sing in the Daughters of Zion choir. I’m a good singer, good as Beyoncé. After I finish high school in Atlanta, I’m goin’ to New York or Hollywood, get on a talent show, make records and perform all over the world.”

  “I hope you do, Gagool. As I recall, Ray-Ray, you were up at Pee Dee.”

  “Yes, sir, for ten years.”

  “My daddy did time there, too.”

  Rangoon Angola shook his head and said, “It’s a painful place to be. If it ain’t been for me findin’ the path taken by the Queen of Sheba followin’ her hook-up with King Solomon, I might still be lost in the desert.”

  “Daddy’s a Son of Sheba.”

  “Sheba had a son by Solomon,” said Ray-Ray, “therefore, we who spread the words she heard from Solomon are also sons.”

  “Probably better these days to be in Atlanta than in Ethiopia.”

  “The founder of First Ethiopian, the Reverend Doctor Mandrake Ammanadib, handed down my instructions when I was a captive. My destiny is written, as is yours.”

  “Mr. Ripley,” Gagool said, stepping toward him, “do you mind if I give you a hug?”

  “Of course not.”

  She embraced Pace and kissed him on the top of his head. Gagool was now taller than he was.

  “Thank you, Gagool. Today is my birthday, and I couldn’t imagine receiving a better gift than seeing you happy and reunited with your father.”

  She pointed over at the porch on Dalceda’s house and said, “Remember when we sat on the swing and my legs were too short to make it go, so you did it?”

  Pace laughed and nodded.

  “That was the last time I was happy for a long time,” she said.

  Rangoon Angola and Pace shook hands again.

  “I’m glad you’ve found your way,” Pace said to him.

  “We all of us hold swords,” said the soon-to-be minister of the First Ethiopian Church of the Queen of Sheba in Atlanta, Georgia.

  As Gagool and her father drove away, it occurred to Pace that Ray-Ray had referred to himself when he’d been in Pee Dee as a captive, which, of course, was the title in English of the story of Proust’s that he had been reading when they arrived. Pace was reminded of a confusing movie he had seen many years before, Orpheus Looks Back, in which a detective investigating a murder says to his partner, “There’s no such thing as a bad coincidence.”

  A bluebird landed a few feet away and looked at him.

  “I guess this is as good a day as any to be eighty years old,” Pace said. “Isn’t it, Daddy?”

  7

  Often when Pace reflected upon his life, he thought that nothing of real significance had happened; at least insofar as his actions were concerned. Not that he had not gone out into the world and looked around, he had, and come into contact with all kinds of people, both good and bad. But had anything profound occurred by the fact of his having existed? Who but himself could even consider the gravity of such a question? He was convinced that in terms of merit he had fallen short; the world could have easily gotten along without him, as it soon would, anyway. Surrounded as he had been by so many people who ostensibly were invested in an ontological belief system, he never could buy a word of any of it. He did, however, finally understand that the Up-Down was the house he lived in, and always had. Why had nobody ever told him? When he spoke to Sailor or Lula, he expected them to answer, he really did. So what if they were dead? That woman who died during a tornado holding a frying pan in her hand; the young mother gunned down at the fruit stand; Perfume James when the roof fell in; Dr. Furbo with a hypodermic needle in his ankle; Rhoda Gombowicz dismembered by men, not the gorillas she chose to live among. What was intelligent about such a design? The Shoshone knew: We are all of us trapped in the Up-Down. Perhaps I did die when I fell off a cliff in Wyoming, Pace thought, or when the hunter in the orange hat shot me through the back and the heart; maybe that’s why I was unharmed by the barrage of bullets in Mexico, because I was already dead, and only now am I beginning to accept it.

  Part Seven

  1

  Pace still wrote occasionally. Having long since completed his book about Sailor and Lula, he added now and then to his memoir. It was odd, though, how the ways in which he remembered individuals varied greatly depending on his mood of the moment. At times these characters seemed to him larger than life, so colorful and exciting they must have existed only in his wildest imagination. Other times, these same people appeared in a dimmer light: sad or pathetic rather than exuberant or heroic. The magic of memory was undependable, erratic at best. Age certainly had something to do with it. Now an octogenarian, Pace remained stubborn in his pursuit of accuracy in depicting persons he had known. The world would continue to change but the dead could not; therefore, if any of them were to be remembered and written about, it was imperative that he resist the temptations to either mythologize or unfairly disparage.

  Pace was fortunate that his health was good enough to enable him to continue living independently. His eyesight had not deteriorated appreciably since a measurable decline three or four years before. He could read in daylight without glasses; it was his night vision that suffered, so he avoided driving after dark whenever possible. Tercero, as he preferred to be called now, was a great help to Pace maintaining the Delahoussaye property; and Tercero’s wife of two years, Angelina, came out from Bay St. Clement three evenings a week to prepare Pace’s dinner and make sure he had the necessary household goods and toiletries. Pace complained that Tercero and Angelina were overdoing it, but in truth he enjoyed the attention and their company.

  He never had gotten back to Mexico, nor had he heard from Gagool Angola since her brief visit with her father en route to Atlanta. Pace occasionally checked out television shows such as American Idol and their ilk in the hope that Gagool would appear, but either he had missed her or she was still singing exclusively with the Daughters of Zion. Marnie Kowalski called every week or two, just to make certain Pace was above ground, as she liked to say, never failing to remind him how fond of him she was and always would be. A day did not pass that he did not think of Perfume James; their lightning-like liaison had burned a mark on him impossible to ignore or erase, not that he wished to do so. Pace likened it to one of his favorite old horror movies, Mark of the Vampire, with Bela Lugosi. Perfume had bitten into his soul, she was in his blood, so part of her would always be with him.

  When the small grays arrived, Pace was not surprised. It was in late August and the air was warm even at three o’clock in the morning. He had not heard their spacecraft land, but he assumed it was in a clearing in the woods on the other side of Dalceda’s house. Several of the visitors were gathered outside between the house and the cottage. Pace observed them through his bedroom window. The grays were each about five feet tall. They did not have mouths but Pace heard them talking, making squealing sounds, regularly gesturing with their extremely long arms and three-fingered hands. Their two eyes were very large, covering a third of their faces, but never blinking; they had no eyelids. There were two holes on either side of their heads, which Pace guessed were auditory components. No visible genitals; wide, partially-webbed feet; protruding bellies; smooth, unwrinkled rumps.

  The squealing conversations continued for the better part of an hour. Pace was not sure exactly how long the grays were there because he fell back to sleep, and when he woke up at six-thirty, they were gone. Pace dressed and walked over to the clearing. There was a deep, circular impression in the ground, and many branches of the surrounding trees had broken off. The only other evidence of the aliens’ presence that Pace could find were a few semi-webbed footprints in the dirt next to the steps leading up to Dalceda’s
house.

  Pace camped out on the porch of the house for the following five nights, hoping that the grays would return, but they did not. He remained confident they would, though, and hoped he would be there when they did. Pace did not tell Tercero or Angelina about the spaceship landing, and did not bring to anyone’s attention the signs in the clearing; nor did he write about the event. If Sailor had been alive, Pace would have told him. His daddy would have camped out on the porch, too.

  2

  Pace remembered that in her letter to him following Lula’s death, Dalceda Delahoussaye confessed that she had never really believed in God or the devil—who she dismissed as “an excuse exists in stupid peoples’ minds”—or in the Big Bang Theory, either. Pace was on a similar wavelength. He did not discount entirely the physicists’ explanation that the universe was a result of a big bang, but who or what lit the fuse? There was still a long way to go, he figured, toward explaining the set-up for this explosion. He would ask the small grays what they knew about it, if he got the chance.

  “Disney against the metaphysicals,” Ezra Pound wrote in the last of his Cantos. Truth in fantasy versus falseness in science. It was useless to expect a definitive answer, so why do people try so hard to sell one? For money and power, of course. Those were temporary rewards but for some—perhaps most—they were enough. True believers were better off for providing a fix for their own insecurities; and The Road to Enlightenment should have been the title of a final Bob Hope and Bing Crosby movie.

  Pace was in a cynical mood. He rose from the kitchen table and went outside to chop kindling. He looked up and there was the constellation of Cassiopeia, queen of Ethiopia. Perseus had arrived there holding the head of Medusa, the Gorgon, whom he had slain. Did Rangoon Angola know that story? If Gagool were here, Pace would tell her about Perseus and Andromeda and Cassiopeia, who, according to the poet Milton, was black, like her, and was so beautiful that after her death she was placed among the stars. Had Gagool become a star yet?

  Pace cut into a block of wood with his hatchet. Among all of the people he had known, there were only a few Pace truly missed, and Gagool Angola was one. He would see her again, if it was in the stars.

  3

  During his earliest years, when Sailor was in prison in Huntsville, doing ten years for his part in an attempted armed robbery of a feed store in Big Tuna, Texas, that resulted in the maiming of an employee and the death of Sailor’s accomplice, Bobby Peru, Pace was raised exclusively by his mother, with occasional assistance from his grandmama Marietta. Lula never visited Sailor while he was incarcerated but regularly corresponded with him, providing details of Pace’s development. She remained faithful to Sailor, rarely even entertaining the thought of being with another man. Lula explained to Pace that his daddy had made a bad mistake by allowing himself to be coerced into committing a serious crime. Lula was pregnant with Pace at the time, and she and Sailor were out of money, stranded in West Texas. Sailor’s foolish act was born out of desperation, and he was fortunate not to have been cut down along with the black angel Bobby Peru. He promised Lula that he never again would betray her trust in him, and in all of their years together following his release, he had not.

  Pace did not really miss his daddy while Sailor was in the penitentiary due to the circumstance of his never having known him. Lula worked during those years at odd jobs, mostly waitressing, in New Orleans, and accepted supplementary financial help from Marietta, who doted on her only grandchild and refused to allow him to suffer for want of proper clothes or food or decent housing because of poor decisions made by her daughter and Pace’s lunkhead daddy. Lula was an attentive mother and always put her son’s needs above her own. She retained her spirit of independence and feisty character, however, which frequently sparked conflicts between Marietta and herself, but her mother recognized and acknowledged Lula’s devotion to Pace, and so maintained civil relations with her, but from a distance. Marietta’s fervent desire that Lula end her relations with Sailor Ripley did not, of course, come to pass, a situation that Marietta eventually came to terms with, albeit reluctantly. True love was a condition Marietta Fortune had not experienced, therefore it was difficult, if not impossible, for her to fully appreciate the concept. Prior to her death, however, having witnessed Sailor’s turnaround and well-intentioned parenting of Pace, she told Lula that Sailor had gained her respect, an unexpected gesture that satisfied her daughter and enabled Lula to think more generously about Marietta in the years following her mother’s passing.

  Lula’s fidelity to Sailor faced a severe test only once, when Pace was seven and a half years old. Lula was not working at the time she met a trumpet player named Duke Davis one night when she and a dancer friend of hers named Baby Doll DuQuoin were having a nightcap in Renaldo’s Martini, a club on Iberville Street. Baby Doll—she swore that was her real Christian name—had danced in a show in Miami that Duke’s band had played in a year or so before they met up at Renaldo’s Martini. Duke was thirty-five years old, from Chicago, where he lived with his wife and three children, as Baby Doll was quick to inform Lula. Davis was not very tall but dark and handsome, with impeccable manners, and Lula could not help but be attracted to him. As she later admitted to Beany Thorn, he reminded her of Sailor, the way he moved and gestured with his hands, even his voice. Duke was in N.O. working a weeklong gig at the DeSalvo Hotel. He had a drink with the two women and exchanged small talk with Baby Doll, who gave him her phone number and told him to call if he had time. After ten minutes, Duke excused himself—the band had a final set to play at one a.m.—and left, but not before paying for their drinks.

  “Seems like a nice guy,” Lula said.

  “I would have gone to bed with him in Miami,” said Baby Doll, “but one of the other girls, Lorna Dune, who’s a porn actress now, got him away from me. I couldn’t compete with her 36-double D’s. She sat on his lap, let her top drop, and put one tit in each of his hands. Skinny little me was toast.”

  At noon the next day, Duke Davis called Lula.

  “How did you get my number?” she asked him.

  “From Baby Doll. I’m free until nine tonight. Would you like to have lunch with me? How about Galatoire’s, at three?”

  Without hesitating, Lula said yes. Duke said, “Great!” and hung up. She was more than a little surprised at herself for capitulating so quickly, and considered calling Duke back, but she didn’t have his number or know where he was staying. She decided to stand him up, but after she picked up Pace from school at three-fifteen, she drove down to the Quarter, parked her car, and entered Galatoire’s at a quarter to four with Pace in tow.

  Duke Davis was sitting at a table against the far wall, drinking a Bloody Mary. As soon as he spotted Lula, he stood up and waved, smiling broadly. Then he noticed Pace, lost his smile a bit, but put it back before they reached his table.

  “I thought perhaps you’d found something better to do,” Duke said.

  “Had to fetch my son from school. Pace, this is Duke. Duke, this is Pace.”

  Duke took the boy’s small hand in his own big one and said, “Glad to know you, son.”

  “What’s wrong with your lip?” Pace asked. “You get punched?”

  Duke grinned and Lula said, “Mr. Davis is a trumpet player, Pace. If you play it for a long time, the mouthpiece leaves an impression.”

  “It’s called an embouchure, son. That’s the way a musician applies his lips and tongue to a wind instrument.”

  “I’m Sailor Ripley’s son, mister, not yours. He’s in prison in Texas. You gonna have that embutcher forever? It’s ugly.”

  “Why don’t we all sit down?” said Duke.

  Pace never forgot having lunch that day at Galatoire’s. Duke Davis kept trying to hold his mother’s hands and she kept pulling them away. Afterwards, when they were standing on Bourbon Street in front of the restaurant, Duke Davis asked Pace if he’d like to take a ride in a carriage pulled by a
mule, and Pace said, “You take it, we got a car.”

  Lula met Duke by herself in the bar of the DeSalvo between sets the evening before he and his band left for Chicago. He had phoned her several times after their luncheon date, wanting her to meet him following his gig, but she told him that was too late, that she had to be up early to take Pace to school. When she said she had to go, Duke walked Lula outside and around the corner into Père Ferdinand Alley, where he gently but firmly pushed her up against a wall, kissed her and put his right hand under her skirt between her legs. Lula let him keep it there while they kissed, then pushed him away.

  “You’re wet,” said Duke.

  “Your wife’s pussy probably is, too,” she said. “Have a good trip to Chicago.”

  The next day, Baby Doll called Lula and asked how her date with Duke had gone.

  “It wasn’t a date, Baby Doll. We just had a drink before his band went on again.”

  “You didn’t stay?”

  “No, I went home.”

  “Shoot, Lula, I wanted to know what his dick is like.”

  “You should have asked Lorna Dune.”

  Pace did not know that his mother had seen Duke Davis again following their lunch at Galatoire’s. One day three years later, after Sailor and Lula were reunited, while the three of them were watching Louis Armstrong play cornet and sing on a television show, Sailor said, “I wonder how it feels for a woman to kiss a man with a split lip like Satchmo’s.”

  “It’s called an embutcher,” said Pace.

  4

  The morning was cloudy and cold with a whiff of moisture in the air. Pace had been awake since four-thirty; rarely these days did he sleep more than four or five hours at a stretch. The time now was twenty past seven. For the last hour or so he had been reading Wilfred Thesiger’s fascinating book, Arabian Sands, a personal account of the British explorer’s crossing of the Empty Quarter of Arabia from 1945 to 1950, before oil was discovered in the region and changed forever the vast expanse of desert then occupied almost exclusively by Bedouins. Thesiger had spent most of his adult life among the Arabs, only in his penultimate years residing in Kenya; and then, in his final, fading days, back in England, where he died at the age of ninety-three. The Oxford-educated Thesiger had led a daring existence, experiencing deprivation of various kinds and danger during his travels, distinguishing himself by his service in World War II, and capturing it all brilliantly in his books. Pace did not expect to live to be ninety-three, but that was only ten years from now, so it was a possibility. After all, what was the alternative? He still felt pretty good on most days, and to his knowledge no antagonistic termites were gnawing on his insides.