Southern Nights

by Barry Gifford

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘So the foreman can take over the project from the big boss, or somethin’, I can’t tell. Also, I figure the foreman’s got the spotted hots for Chiquita, a native honey who’s Sabu’s soul-baby.’

  ‘Think I seen this one, Cutie. Bad guy gets eaten by piranhas at the end.’

  ‘Oh, wow, Bet! Now they got Sabu in a skin costume about to sacrifice some small squirmin’ animal to the jaguar god, only he can’t cut it Look, now he thrown away the knife and had him a kind of fit Chiquita takin’ after him.’

  Betty opened her eyes and watched for a few seconds.

  ‘Chick reminds me of that café au lait gal was in C block, Pearline Nail. You recall her?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, sure do. She the one razored up Rupee Moreno when Rupee said a Baptist just someone don’t favor lynchin’ on Sunday.’

  Cutie got up and turned off the set. She picked up the copy of the Tallahassee Democrat that Betty had tossed on the floor and leafed through it.

  ‘Hey, Bet, ain’t this sweet as hell? Listen, this is in the “Memorials” column of the newspaper: ‘“In loving memory of Blackie Lala. Born November 15, 1925—Died February 10, 1991. Pops, we can’t forget you, we never will. Oh, that cruel night you laid so still, we asked God why. Here’s what he said, ‘He’s with Me now, he’s not dead. I know you loved him, so did I. I’ve taken him home, so please don’t cry. Evil can destroy a man, it lurks in every corner. When love survives, as it surely can, pain lifts off the mourner.’ Sadly missed by his entire family. Signed, DeLeon, Felda, Birdie Dawn, Tequesta and Waldo Lala.”’

  ‘Be somethin’ different,’ Betty said, ‘havin’ blood relatives means anything to ya. I never did.’

  Cutie put down the paper and curled up next to Big Betty’s legs.

  ‘There’s blood between us, Bet, you know? It’s how I feel.’

  Betty’s right hand found Cutie’s head and caressed it.

  ‘I do know, sweet pea. You just the little lamb lyin’ down with the ol’ lion what’s still got most her teeth.’

  ‘All I need, lady,’ Cutie said, and closed her eyes.

  JUDGMENT

  other than the four years he’d spent as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, and the four in New York while he had worked the counter at Hartley’s Luncheonette on 116th Street and Amsterdam Avenue when he wasn’t attending law school at Columbia, from which institution he received his degree, Rollo Lamar had spent his entire life in Egypt City, Florida.

  His mother, Purity Mayfield, had worked as a maid for Arthur and Delia Lamar for ten years, from the time she was fifteen until she was twenty-five, at which age she died giving birth to her only child. Since the father, a juke joint piano player named Almost Johnson, was married to another woman and had been murdered in a mysterious incident soon after Purity’s pregnancy became evident, and Purity Mayfield had no relatives in the vicinity, the Lamars, who were childless, adopted the boy and raised him as if he were their own son, even though they were white and he was black. They named him Rollo Mayfield Lamar, after Arthur’s father and Rollo’s mother.

  The Lamar family had long been proponents of equal rights for all people, regardless of race or religion. Rollo Leander Lamar, Arthur’s father, had been the first federal judge of the district in which Egypt City was situated, a position Arthur attained a generation later. Both Arthur and his father had attended Columbia Law, and so, of course, young Rollo followed suit.

  Young Rollo, as he was known in Egypt City even into adulthood, was educated prior to his college years at home by Judge Lamar and his wife. Blacks were at that time not admitted to southern universities, other than exclusively colored institutions, so Young Rollo was sent to Chicago, a city he came to loathe. He spent his years there mostly sequestered in his dormitory room, studying, seldom venturing beyond the immediate area of the campus. New York he liked only a little better. Both places he found too cold, corrupt and unfriendly; the black people too aggressive. Rollo was relieved once his studies had been completed and he was able to return permanently to Egypt City.

  Back home, he went to work for the firm of Lamar, Forthright & Lamar. Abe Forthright, Arthur Lamar’s best friend and professional partner for twenty-seven years, had died of pleurisy shortly after Young Rollo’s return, four years to the day after the Judge’s fatal heart attack that occurred during the Miss Egypt City Beauty Contest, of which the senior Lamar was, of course, a judge. Just as Breezy Pemberton strode onstage at the Gasparilla Livestock Center, wearing only a zebra-skin two-piece and ruby red spike heels, Judge Lamar keeled over sideways and fell off his chair. He was dead before he hit the ground, the doctor said, of a massive coronary.

  Breezy Pemberton, who the following day was unanimously named by the four remaining judges as that year’s Miss Egypt City, made this victory speech: ‘I’m entirely honored to have won but equally entirely horrified that my beauty might have caused the death of such a prominent citizen of our great town as Judge Lamar. I want the Lamar family to know that it never was any intention of my own to upset the Judge by wearin’ a zebra two-piece, certainly not to inspire such a terrible tragedy as has occurred. But I guess sometimes this kinda thing happens, whether required by God or not of course I am in no position to understand, and it ain’t no person’s fault I am sixteen-and-one-half years old and Judge Lamar was much, much older, I know, and seein’ a young lady, namely me, like that caused a shock to his tired-out system he was no longer capable of standin’, and it’s too bad. I’m sorry for the Lamars that is left, but I’m also thrilled to’ve won the title of Miss Egypt City on my first try, and I just want to say I’m dedicatin’ my reign to the mem’ry of the dead judge. Thank you all, you’re very sweet.’

  Rollo was accepted by the community as a Lamar and treated, as far as he could tell, like any other man, despite the fact of his being black. There were very few black citizens of Egypt City, the population of which remained constant at approximately 15,000. Rollo had never married, living on alone in the Lamar house after Delia’s death. Delia had kept a signed photograph of Breezy Pemberton, which Breezy had presented to her in a gold-edged frame, on the piano in the front room for several years, but as soon as the news reached Egypt City that Breezy had died of acute alcohol poisoning in a room at the Las Sombras Motel in Hermosa Beach, California, Delia took the photo, frame and all, and threw it into the trashbin.

  ‘Why’d you do that, Mama?’ Rollo had asked her.

  ‘For every good reason, Son,’ Delia said.

  CONFLUENCE

  in 1934, rollo Leander Lamar had been the founder of the Colored Waifs’ Home on Trocadero Island. Thirty years later, following passage of the Civil Rights Act, the Home was renamed the R. L. Lamar Orphanage for Florida’s Destitute Tots. Young Rollo made regular visits to FDT, as it was called, usually on the third Saturday of every month.

  On this particular Saturday, Rollo rolled his aqua Chrysler New Yorker onto State Highway 98 at twenty minutes past ten in the morning, expecting to reach Trocadero Island before noon. The sky was overcast but Rollo wore sunglasses anyway, out of habit. He switched on the radio.

  ‘And from Miami comes the news that Piero Turino has died at the age of sixty-two. Mr Turino, an explorer who conquered the Andes, survived machine gun wounds and an attack by flesh-eating fish, succumbed to a heart attack.

  ‘A European count who inherited but did not use the title, Turino was born in Istria, which became part of Yugoslavia. His latest venture had been in the field of medical research involving substances he had brought back from the Amazon, which he believed embodied anti-cancer properties.

  ‘In 1940, Turino, then a teenage soldier in the Italian army, was machine-gunned near the Greek border during the Balkan campaign. Wounded in the chest, he was taken to Albania and placed on a hospital ship bound for Italy. Halfway across the Adriatic, the ship was sunk by a submarine. Turino again survived, rescued from the sea by a passing ship.

  ‘In the late 19
40s, he emigrated to Canada, where he became a writer and broadcast journalist. Later he invented the Turino Control-Descent Parachute, used by the US government, and once survived a test jump that landed him in the middle of a Boston freeway.

  ‘Piero Turino and his wife moved to Miami in the mid-1960s, and soon thereafter he began his expeditions in South America. While diving in a murky pool in the jungles of Venezuela, he was attacked by fish that tore apart his left hand and wrist. The intrepid Turino suffered profuse bleeding and delirium, but survived. His widow, Isabella Lanapoppi Turino, reported that his last words were, “My advice is to survive as long as possible, because when you die, you vanish. A man will never be remembered as he truly was.”’

  ‘No good goddamn reason he should be, either,’ Rollo said aloud.

  A commercial came on so Rollo reached down and switched the dial to another station. ‘My girl,’ sang The Temptations, ‘talkin’ ’bout my girl.’ Rollo left it there.

  Big Betty and Cutie had awakened early that morning, made love, showered together, dressed, packed up and checked out of the motel.

  ‘We’ll get coffee on the road, Cutie, okay?’ Big Betty said as they got into the black Monaco. ‘There’s some cupcakes left over in the back, you want ’em.’

  ‘Ain’t particularly hungry, Bet, thanks. Where we headed, anyway?’

  ‘Trocadero Island, place I always wanted to see. Have a bird sanctuary there. Also figure it’s time we got back to work, sweet pea, don’t you think?’

  ‘Cleanin’ up for the Lord.’

  Betty laughed. ‘Yeah, She likes things orderly.’

  MISS CUTIE, HER EARLY LIFE

  cutie early was born in Daytime, Arkansas, population 1150, to Naureen (née Harder) and Arlen ‘Left’ Early. Soon after her birth, Cutie moved with her parents to Plant City, Florida, where Arlen found work as a bridgetender on the Seaboard Rail Line. Over the next four years, two more children followed: a boy, Ewell, called You, and another girl, Licorice. Being the eldest, it fell to Cutie to tend her siblings as soon as she was able, especially after Naureen developed an unfortunate affection for Southern Comfort.

  At about the same time that his wife found a friend in a bottle, Arlen found one across town, a divorcée named Vanna Munck, with whom he soon kept more than casual company. When Cutie was ten, her daddy left the family and went to live with the Munck woman. One year later, at suppertime, Naureen drove her yellow Voláre over to Vanna Munck’s house and left it idling in front while she went inside and shot Left Early and his paramour to death with a .38 caliber handgun her delinquent husband had given her to protect herself with when she was alone in the house. After murdering Arlen and Vanna, Naureen, who was apparently stone-cold sober at the time, got back into her vehicle and drove it as fast as it would go smack into a brick wall behind the Reach Deep Baptist Church. The police concluded that she had died practically on impact

  The children were taken in by Arlen’s brother, Tooker, and his wife, Fairlee, who lived in Tampa. You and Licorice accomplished a relatively seamless transition, but Cutie had difficulty adjusting. Her first serious misstep occurred when she was twelve-and-a-half years old. Cutie had been on a date with a Cuban boy named Malo Suerte, who was seventeen, and they had driven in Malo’s Mercury through the exit at the Seminole Outdoor Auto Theater. The drive-in security cop, Turp Puhl, a former prison guard at Starke, had a particular hatred for kids who tried to sneak in without paying. After spotting the red Merc as it crept stealthily with its lights off toward a vacant stall, Turp Puhl pulled out his revolver and made a beeline for the intruder.

  As soon as the illegal entrant was berthed, the security guard ordered Malo and Cutie out at gunpoint. Malo swung the driver’s-side door hard into Turp, who dropped his revolver. While the boy and the man struggled, Cutie came around the rear of the Mercury, picked up the fallen weapon, and shot Turp Puhl once behind his left knee, causing him to curse loudly and release his grip on Malo. Malo grabbed the gun from Cutie, jumped back into his car and drove away, leaving Cutie standing next to the wounded guard, who took hold of the girl and held onto her until the police arrived.

  Cutie was sent to the Nabokov Juvenile Depository for Females at Thanatossa for eighteen months. Shortly thereafter, Malo Suerte went off the Gandy Bridge and drowned in his Mercury after it blew a front tire while being chased by the highway patrol.

  By the time she was sixteen, Cutie had established herself as a regular problem, for both her family and the Tampa police. You and Licorice loved her, but they had their own little lives to sort out, so they kept their distance. After Tooker discovered a cache of knives, including a Hibben Double Shadow dagger, a fifteen-inch Mamba, a quarter-inch-thick Gurkha MK3 and several Italian switchblades, under Cutie’s bed, he confiscated the weapons and turned them in, along with Cutie, to the authorities. The knives had been stolen by a boyfriend of hers named Harley Reel, a part-time shrimp salesman who lived with his wife and four children in a trailer home in Oldsmar. He had asked Cutie to keep the knives for him until he found a customer. Harley Reel got four years in Raiford, and Cutie, whom Tooker and Fairlee told the judge they never wanted to see again, was sent back to Thanatossa until she turned eighteen.

  Since then, Cutie had supported herself mostly by waitressing, with some soft-hooking thrown in. Her definition of a soft-hooker was a girl who worked without a pimp and made dates privately, without advertising or standing on a corner. Cutie usually went out with older men who didn’t mind paying for her time. Most of them couldn’t get it up anyway, Cutie found out, which made her job easier, although occasionally a john’s frustration over his inability to perform caused him to physically abuse her. Cutie quickly learned to take the money at the beginning of the evening, which ordinarily included dinner, rather than have to go through what could be a difficult scene afterwards. Working without a pimp to protect her had its drawbacks, but Cutie liked not having to be responsible to anyone other than herself.

  Cutie had ended up at Fort Sumatra after a bad date, during which she’d been forced to stick a customer in the ribs with a Tanto boot knife. The john had paid Cutie a hundred dollars for letting him piss on her hair. Ordinarily, she didn’t do perv, but this was an old guy, in his seventies, he seemed nice, and he promised not to get any urine on her face. He lost control and sprayed her all over, and she jumped up before he’d finished, which angered him. The old man began beating on her, so Cutie cut him. There just happened to be a cop standing outside the motel room when the stuck customer started screaming and Cutie, still dripping wet from the golden shower, ran out.

  Big Betty looked out for her now. Cutie knew she could trust her, they could trust each other, and that, Cutie felt, was about the most one woman could ever hope to expect from another. Men hadn’t even progressed that far, she figured, and now it was too late. She and Bet were at the end of their rope with them.

  BIG BETTY, HOW IT HAPPENED

  dubuque ‘big boy’ Stalcup, Betty’s father, was fully grown at six-foot-six, two hundred thirty-five pounds by the time he was sixteen. He was raised on a south Georgia farm next to the Suwanoochee Creek close to the point at which the Suwannee River crawls out of the Okefenokee Swamp. The Stalcup place wasn’t so much a farm, really, as a junkyard hideout for criminals. Big Boy’s father and mother, Mayo and Hilda Sapp, maintained an infamous safe house for thieves, moonshiners and killers on the run. Whenever the law got up enough nerve to invade the Stalcup sanctuary, which was not often, the various fugitives in residence used a secret trail to the swamp, where they would remain until one of the Stalcup kids came to tell them it was safe to come back. The Stalcups made no real attempt to work their land, which had been homesteaded in 1850. The War Between the States passed the Stalcup clan by; they were too remote and the males considered extraordinarily crazy and too dangerous by those few who were acquainted with them to be pressed into service of the Confederacy.

  Big Boy and his wife, Ella Dukes, had four children, of which Betty was
the youngest and also the only girl. Her three brothers, Sphinx, Chimera and Gryphon—each of whose names were chosen by Big Boy from Bulfinch’s Mythology, the only book other than the Bible that he owned—never left the farm. Betty, named by Ella after her grandmama, Elizabeth Hispaniola, a niece of the Seminole warlord Osceola, had run off at the age of fourteen with Duval and Sordida Head, a brother and sister from Cross City, Florida, who had robbed a bank in Valdosta and paid the Stalcups to hide them. Their descriptions of city life intrigued Betty, and she agreed to leave with them when they felt the time was right. Betty never said goodbye to her parents or brothers and never returned to the farm.

  After Duval had used her several times, he tired of Betty and passed her to his sister, whose sexual proclivities involved mainly the participation of women and dogs. Sordida introduced the adolescent Betty, who at fourteen was already a rather large person, to the delights of female love, which Betty found preferable to the rough ways of the men who had handled her—namely her brothers, who had deflowered their sister when she was nine and subsequently took their pleasure with her whenever one or more of them felt the urge, and Duval Head. Betty told Sordida that Sphinx, Chimera and Gryphon really preferred cornholing one another anyway, and figured she’d hardly be missed.

  Big Betty stayed with the Heads for a few months, during which time they knocked off dozens of convenience stores and gas stations and burglarized homes all over the state of Florida. Duval and Sordida went off one day to rob a bank in Fort Walton Beach, leaving Betty to wait for them in the Greyhound bus station, and they never returned. A man and his wife who were traveling to Miami gave Betty enough money for a ticket to New Orleans, a city that for no reason she could think of Betty told the couple was her destination. Betty never did learn that both Duval and Sordida had been killed in a head-on crash with an eighteen-wheel Peterbilt transporting commodes when Duval drove their 1972 Dodge Coronet onto an off ramp of Interstate 10 while attempting to elude a police car in hot pursuit.