Southern Nights

by Barry Gifford

  Betty found work in New Orleans as an exotic dancer at the Club Spasm on Opelousas Avenue in Algiers. She was big enough to pass for twenty-one and nobody questioned her. Between her dancing gig and turning occasional tricks on the side, Betty did all right She stayed away from drugs and alcohol, neither of which particularly agreed with her, and entered into a series of lesbian relationships with other dancers and prostitutes. Many of the women with whom Betty consorted were married or had boyfriends, a situation to Betty’s liking; she was not interested in committing herself to any one person and discovered that she enjoyed living alone. Privacy, a condition she had never truly experienced either at home or on the road with the Heads, was her greatest pleasure.

  Eventually, Betty moved on to Houston, then Dallas, where she took a small caliber bullet in her left ankle from a drunken patron named Feo Lengua, an illegal from Nueva Rosita, while she was dancing onstage at Rough Harvey’s Have Faith Sho-Bar. After she was shot, Betty’s days as an exotic dancer were finished, and she worked as a bartender, card dealer, waitress, seamstress, car wash cashier and hooker—just about anything and everything, as she drifted from Texas back through Louisiana and Mississippi to Alabama and Florida.

  It was in Orlando, where she was working in a janitorial capacity, cleaning up a medical building after hours, that Betty was brutally raped and beaten by two male co-workers one night on the job. Betty reported the attack to the police, who several days later informed her that there was insufficient evidence to pursue the case. She bought a Beretta .25 caliber automatic at Emmett’s Swap City off the Orange Blossom Trail near the Tupperware International headquarters, went to the apartment of one of her assailants, a glue-sniffing freak named Drifton Fark, found him in an olfactory stupor, and shot him just below the heart. She then hunted down Drifton Fark’s companion, Willie ‘Call Me Israel’ Slocumb, a black man who claimed to be a Miccosukee Indian and who had converted from Disciples of Christ to Judaism after reading Sammy Davis, Jr’s account of his own conversion in his autobiography, Yes I Can!, and shot him once in the right knee and again in the groin while he sat at the bar in The Blind Shall Lead Lounge across from the Flying Tigers Warbird Air Museum.

  After Betty shot Willie ‘Call Me Israel’ Slocumb and watched him drop to the floor, writhing in pain and clutching at his affected parts, she laid the Beretta on the bar and told the bartender to call the cops. She sat down on the stool next to the one that had been occupied by her most recent victim, picked up the glass he had been about to drink from prior to the interruption, and drained the contents, a double shot of Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks. Just before the police arrived, Betty told the bartender, ‘You know, that’s the first time liquor really tasted decent to me.’

  Betty was sent to the Fort Sumatra Detention Center for Wayward Women, where, until she met up with Cutie Early, she kept mostly to herself. Miss Cutie was the one for her, all right, Betty decided, the only person she could rely on forever and ever, her ideal friend. Betty had an agenda, of course, but Cutie, Big Betty vowed, would always rate just as high on the big chart of life as she did herself.

  EVERYBODY GOT THEIR OWN

  IDEA OF HOME

  as rollo lamar drove toward Trocadero Island, he thought about B. Traven, the writer who had insisted on keeping the details of his life, including his birth, real name and heritage, secret so long as he was alive. Rollo, who had always been a dedicated reader of fiction, was a great admirer of Traven’s work, such as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre; The Death Ships; The Cotton-Pickers; his jungle series, which included the novels March to the Monteria, The General from the Jungle, Government and The Carreta; and many others.

  Traven had deliberately attempted to cover his tracks, with good reason, since he had been a radical journalist and activist in his native Germany and become a wanted man there. He escaped to Mexico, changed his name more than once, worked as a merchant seaman and in the mahogany forests, finally marrying and settling down to the life of a novelist and short-story writer in Mexico City. Traven and his wife raised two daughters there, and when director John Huston made a film of Treasure, starring Humphrey Bogart, Traven received a certain amount of notoriety, even though he attempted to masquerade, during his stint as technical advisor to the production, as a friend of Traven’s named Hal Croves.

  Rollo liked not only Traven’s novels but his repeated statements that the man who produced the work was of no real importance, that only the work should be examined, not the life of the author. Of course, Traven was paranoid, concerned that his early life and supposed crimes might be revealed. Whether or not he would still have been held accountable for any incendiary acts was doubtful; nevertheless, ‘the man nobody knows,’ as he fictionalized himself, developed a strict philosophy based on the insignificance of the creator.

  It made sense to Rollo, and as he wheeled along he decided that it would not be the worst condition in the world to become utterly anonymous, known only to oneself. That way, the truth would disappear and there would remain only the brutal evidence of a life, the greater truth, without the unnecessary pain of reexamination. Life itself is difficult enough, Rollo thought. Retrospective investigation, Traven knew, could reveal nothing of real value, so he did his best to conceal his origin. It was a difficult maneuver, given the amount and quality of the work he produced, and the fact that it was intended for public consumption.

  Rollo, who at sixty-four bore an uncanny resemblance, though of darker hue, to the actor Broderick Crawford as he appeared in the 1955 movie Big House, USA, had no desire nor any reason to disappear. There was nothing in his past he needed to cover up. In fact, he realized, his life had been rather dull, marked by no really emotionally searing events, despite the death of his mother when he was a young boy and unusual circumstances of his subsequent upbringing by the Lamars. He had no responsibilities other than to himself, and no outstanding complaints. As he headed his car across the Trocadero Island Bridge, he wondered if it was too late for things to change.

  Once across the bridge, Rollo pulled into the yard in front of Jasper Pasco’s Fishin’ Pier and Grocery, a regular stop of his on this run. Rollo needed to stretch his legs, and he usually enjoyed his visits with Jasper Pasco, whom Rollo had known since the Judge started taking him along on trips to the orphanage fifty-three years before. Jasper had to be at least eighty-eight now, Rollo figured, but still more than able and willing to carry both ends of a conversation without much encouragement.

  Rollo stretched his arms and legs, bent over at the waist as best he could and then walked into the store. Before the screen door could bang shut behind Rollo, Jasper was at him.

  ‘You look like a man in need of a ringer for squeezin’ meat from a muskrat,’ the old man shouted from his perch on a high stool behind a wooden counter laden with a motley assortment of items, such as purple tennis shoes, a bucket of used golf balls, net dip for treating trawls, loaves of Wonder Bread, all sizes and varieties of nails, red potatoes, an LP album of Conway Twitty’s greatest hits, green Red Man tobacco baseball caps and more. Behind Jasper on the wall was a nine-by-twelve-inch framed photograph of John F. Kennedy, autographed by the slain president and inscribed, ‘To J. Pasco, for whom may the catfish continue to bite and bite hard.’

  ‘Lost my taste for muskrat when I was a boy,’ Rollo said.

  ‘Then I guess to hell you’re after chicken necks,’ said Jasper, ‘you’re goin’ fishin’.’

  ‘No, thanks, Jasper. I’m on my way to check on the orphans, as usual. See they ain’t bein’ made to sleep on their same pee-stained sheets nights.’

  Jasper grunted. ‘Ain’t wet the bed myself since my pecker seized up six, seven years back. Used to be I was only full of vinegar, now I’m full of piss and vinegar. Haw!’

  Rollo smiled and shook Pasco’s liver-spotted right hand. Jasper reached down with his left and massaged his bare left foot.

  ‘Got the athlete’s foot, Rollo. Doctor told me wear socks, but I hate ’em. Hate wearin�
�� socks almost as much as I hate most my neighbors abandoned me for the Piggly Wiggly soon as it went in up the highway. I used to be a sweet fella, Rollo, you knew me about when. Then that lyin’ sumbitch Scaramouche, when he was state senator, promised me the game warden’s job if I swung the local vote his way, never come through. That was the start of my bad luck, okay. He gone up to Washington with the US Congress, asked him to prevent the Piggly Wiggly comin’ in, ruinin’ my business, but the sumbitch never even wrote me back. Wouldn’t take my phone calls, neither. Well, I ain’t easygoin’ no more, you can bet. I’m gonna laugh lastest and longest, though. You’ll see.’

  ‘Oh, Jasper, shut,’ said a thin, eagle-beaked woman sitting on another stool behind the counter. She was smoking an unfiltered cigarette and looked to be about ten or fifteen years Jasper’s junior.

  ‘Hello, Hermina,’ Rollo said to old man Pasco’s wife of forty-six years. ‘How you been keepin’?’

  Hermina emitted her version of laughter, an extended screech, which sounded as if she had unexpectedly been doused with a bucket of ice water.

  ‘Protectin’ this jackass from himself is about all I ever do,’ said Hermina. ‘No man on earth better suited to guaranteein’ grief to a body than Mr. Pasco, you know it.’

  ‘What you expect, the world decayin’ the way it is?’ Jasper shouted. ‘Can’t expect people to keep a promise! Look at that truck passin’ there,’ he said, pointing at the road. ‘Shrimper with a butterfly net. Buttetfly nets are the ruination of human creation! Can’t get the refrigerator man to come out. Tobacco man shows late. Remar the cracker man ain’t been in two weeks. And Bowlegs Linda the cupcake girl we ain’t seen since she went to Pensacola to bury her mama.’

  ‘Bury her mama, my bony ass,’ said Hermina. ‘That girl gettin’ buried under by the navy, is what.’

  ‘I been around,’ Jasper said. ‘Dogpatch USA, Six Flags Over Texas, Rock City, Disney World. Ain’t much I haven’t seen. Had me a Co-Cola once with Connie Francis in Dothan, Alabama. Or was it a beer with Crystal Gayle in Calhoun, Georgia? Which was it, Hermina?’

  Hermina screeched and coughed, expelling a small cloud of cigarette smoke as she did.

  ‘Go on and laugh, woman! Rollo, you ask people up and down the Gulf Coast about this place and if they don’t know me they ain’t never been a cow in Texas.’

  ‘Just stopped by to say hello, Jasper,’ Rollo said, ‘and to pick up a roll of Spear-o-mint Lifesavers, you got any.’

  Jasper reached into a pile, fished around and came up with something.

  ‘Only got Pep-o-mint,’ he said.

  ‘Good enough,’ said Rollo, taking the candy from Jasper and handing him four bits.

  ‘’Preciate it, Rollo. You come by again soonest’

  ‘Next time I’m here, Jasper. Take care, now. You too, Hermina.’

  Jasper’s wife sat and smoked. Wrinkled, sagging skin hooded her eyes.

  ‘Everybody got their own idea of home,’ she said.

  Rollo walked to his car, unwrapping the Lifesavers as he proceeded, popped one into his mouth and was about to get in when a voice behind him inquired, ‘Mister, you believe the devil needs a witness?’

  Rollo turned around and saw a large, dough-faced woman with small pink eyes standing there, holding a gun in her right hand. She pointed it at Rollo’s belly.

  ‘It’s okay, honey,’ Big Betty said, ‘you can drive.’

  Betty opened the driver’s door, got in and slid over to the front passenger seat.

  ‘Come on, get in,’ she ordered, and Rollo obeyed, dropping the roll of Lifesavers on the ground as he did.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’ she asked, as Rollo started the car and put it in gear.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘The devil needin’ a witness.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘You will,’ said Big Betty.

  BEDBUGS

  cutie kept the black Monaco close behind the aqua New Yorker as the vehicles proceeded in tandem past the turnoff for the R. L. Lamar Orphanage for Florida’s Destitute Tots. In the Chrysler, Big Betty pushed the nose of her revolver up against Rollo’s right kneecap as he drove, following her directions. Rollo did not ask any questions. He thought about Bobbie Dean Baker, how she looked standing in his office the day before, and decided that if he survived this situation, whatever it turned out to be, he would definitely do his best to turn a professional relationship into a personal one. Bobbie Dean was between marriages, after all, and she certainly was friendly. There weren’t many women of any age in Egypt City, Rollo thought, who had a shape as fine as Bobbie Dean Baker’s. He wondered if she’d heard about his quintuple bypass and whether that information would work in his favor or not. Finally, his curiosity got the best of him.

  ‘I trust you won’t mind my asking you what this is all about,’ Rollo said.

  ‘Trust is what it’s all about, all right,’ Big Betty answered. ‘Turn left up here.’

  Rollo did as she instructed and noticed the dark Dodge sticking to his Chrysler’s tail.

  ‘Keep on now straight the next ten miles, then I tell you how to go.’

  ‘You connected to that person following us?’

  Betty laughed. ‘All ways exceptin’ at the navel. You ever hear about them twins in Belle Fourche, South Dakota? Darlene and Delores.’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘They was prob’ly close as me’n Cutie. By the way, my name’s Betty Stalcup. Yours?’

  ‘Rollo Lamar.’

  ‘Glad to know ya, Rollo. You’re not bad lookin’ for a older type, coffee-colored fella. Anyway, these gals in Belle Fourche was charged with murderin’ a man each sister had married twice. I got the newspaper clippin’ here, you want to know the details.’

  ‘I don’t guess I’d mind.’

  Big Betty took the article from her shirt pocket, unfolded the paper and began reading:

  ‘“Jurors convicted one woman of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder but acquitted her twin sister of charges that they helped to kill the eighty-five-year-old man each had married twice.

  ‘“Darlene Phillips was convicted of the most serious charge but cleared of all other charges. Her sister, Delores Christenson, was acquitted of all charges. Phillips received mandatory life in prison.

  ‘“Phillips and Christenson, forty-six, have each been married four times. Both had brushes with the law before they were indicted in the death of Walter Gibbs, who was slain April Fools’ Day 1990 at his home in Lemmon.”

  ‘“‘Walter was a nice guy until he got mixed up with those nitwit twins,’ said Lillian Bums of Morristown, whose husband, George, was a close friend of Gibbs. ‘They’re crazier than a couple of bedbugs.’

  ‘“Jerome Phillips, thirty-eight, a convicted rustler who is married to Darlene but says he is in love with her sister, confessed to smothering Gibbs with a pillow. He testified at the twins’ trial this week that Darlene helped hold down Gibbs. Phillips pleaded guilty May twenty-first to a murder conspiracy charge. He is to be sentenced next month.

  ‘“The twins had been charged with planning the murder and helping to kill the frail Gibbs. Phillips said he and the twins had several discussions about ways to kill Gibbs, who had named Christenson as heir to his $178,000 estate.

  ‘“Bob Van Norman, who represented Christenson, told the jury that his client essentially has the mental capacity of a second-grader and is not nearly smart enough to either plan Gibbs’s death or to know that she should report the murder scheme to authorities.”

  ‘Course this is where me’n Cutie differs from them,’ Big Betty interjected, before continuing with the article: ‘“Gibbs was fifty-eight when he first married Christenson, who was eighteen at the time. They were divorced about ten years later, and he married Darlene. Another divorce, two remarriages to the twins and one other marriage brought his total to five marriages.

  ‘“‘It’s confusing to everybody who knows them,’ Burns said.

  �
�“Darlene Phillips is already serving a fifty-year prison term for trying to burn down Gibbs’s farmhouse in 1989 while he was sleeping on the couch. A neighbor saw the fire and helped Gibbs get out She was sentenced on the arson conviction in August 1990, four months after Gibbs’s death.

  ‘“Authorities first thought Gibbs’s death was natural but got suspicious several months later when they received a tip that Darlene Phillips was blabbing in prison about a murder. Gibbs’s body was exhumed thirteen months after burial. Officials had thought he died at the hospital in Lemmon, a town of 1,600 in northwestern South Dakota, just three blocks from the North Dakota line. Although his body was taken to the hospital, they did not discover until later that he was dead when an ambulance picked him up.

  ‘“Jerome Phillips is serving eight years for rustling sheep and pigs last year. Christenson served sixty days for helping him. Darlene Phillips met her present husband in the state’s prison for men and women several years ago when she was serving time for torching a house in Bison and he was in jail for writing bad checks.

  ‘“‘The twins tell me I’m like a brother to them,’ said Lemmon Police Chief Nick Schaefer. ‘I don’t know why, because I’ve arrested them several times.’”’

  ‘You and this Cutie got some philosophy in common with these women, you say?’ asked Rollo.

  ‘Don’t know much about philosophy,’ said Big Betty, ‘but it’s not strictly a man’s world no longer, or ain’t you noticed?’

  She spotted a faded wooden road sign that said trocadero island rod & gun club—members only.

  ‘Pull in here,’ Betty commanded. ‘End of the line.’

  THE LAIR

  the trocadero island Rod & Gun Club building had been abandoned for seventeen years, ever since a privately chartered bus carrying all thirty-two of the club’s members had gone off the Trocadero Island Bridge into the Gulf of Mexico. The driver, a fifty-three-year-old one-eyed Honduran citizen named Eusebio Refrito, had fallen asleep at the wheel shortly past midnight of the day the members were returning from the club’s annual ‘Live Free or Why Die?’ weekend in New Orleans. Virtually all of them were in a drunken stupor when the bus flipped over the guard rail.