Southern Nights

by Barry Gifford

  Everyone aboard drowned, including Eusebio Refrito, who had dozed off while half-dreaming about his seventeen-year-old second cousin, Nefaria Reina, who was still living in Tegucigalpa, and with whom Eusebio had begun having sexual relations when she was twelve and he was forty-eight. He had not seen Nefaria for seven months, since Eusebio had fled the economic disaster area his country had become and illegally entered the United States in a SAHSA (‘Stay at home, stay alive’) jet at the Miami airport inside of a packing crate otherwise filled with machetes. At the moment the nose of the two-million-mile veteran of America’s highways hit the bridge railing, Refrito was fantasizing Nefaria half-undressed, running the violet tip of her tongue along the popping purple vein of his ruler-length penis. ‘Mi prima!’ Eusebio shouted a millisecond past impact, not knowing that his spinal cord already had been severed.

  Big Betty and Cutie had moved into the Rod & Gun Club the night before they snatched Rollo Lamar. Betty made Rollo precede her and Cutie into the building. There was nothing in the large front room but the women’s bedrolls, a camp stove and cooking gear.

  ‘Why am I here?’ Rollo asked.

  ‘Aaron stretched out his hand with his rod and smote the dust of the earth, and it became lice,’ said Cutie. ‘All the dust of the land became lice throughout all the land of Egyp’. That’s from Exodus.’

  ‘Men are lice,’ said Betty. ‘You’re our own private experiment in reeducation, Mr Lamar. We’re gonna see if we can make one man right with the Lord before the sword does its swift work.’

  ‘Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,’ said Cutie.

  Big Betty nodded and chorused: ‘Nicodemus saith unto Him: “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”’

  Cutie closed her eyes, continuing: ‘Jesus answered . . . “Marvel not that I said unto thee, ‘Ye must be born again.’” That’s St John.’

  ‘My lord,’ said Rollo.

  Big Betty hit him on the left side of his head with her gun, knocking Rollo to the floor.

  ‘You ain’t got no claim, Mr Lamar,’ she explained. ‘It don’t nearly work that way. As Elmer Ernest Southard said in The Kingdom of Evils, before you get the Grail, you got to slay the dragon.’

  WAVELAND, MISSISSIPPI

  ‘recall once seein’ a girl was struck by lightnin’ on the beach at Waveland, Miss’ippi,’ said Cutie. ‘She was maybe ’bout ten, which’s close to my age at the time. Saw she was helpin’ her family load their beach belongin’s back of their car when the bolt hit her. Knocked a bucket straight out her hand. Fried the girl coulda been me.’

  It was two A.M. and Big Betty and Cutie were lying together in a double bag. Their portable shortwave was on, tuned in to an FM station. Clyde McPhatter was singing ‘Warm Me Up’ in his smooth falsetto. Rollo was asleep in the extra bag twenty feet away.

  ‘That must been terrifyin’ for you, sweet pea, bein’ so young and impressionable and all. Kinda incident spook any person’s future, most ’specially a child.’

  ‘Don’t know ’bout it doin’ any psycho damage, that’s what you mean.’

  Betty stroked Miss Cutie’s curls. There was not enough light in the room for Bet to see Cutie’s hair.

  ‘You know, Miss Pea, swear I feel the red. It travel from the innard and explode up hair.’

  ‘’Member a fella, Cleon Tone, back in Arkansas, had him a congregation called the Church of the Fresh Start.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Uh huh. Used to he’d say, “Want you-all hand yourselfs a fresh start every day.” Give everyone another chance.’

  ‘Sounds righteous enough,’ said Betty. ‘It hold up?’

  Cutie giggled in the dark.

  ‘He’da wished! Clean Cleon come asunder due to the dynamic charms of Aristidia Quenqui, wife of a deacon. Cleon Tone put the husband on his blankets-for-the-poor pickup run, durin’ which time the mighty Reverend Clean served Mrs Quenqui somethin’ more’n another chance. Mr Alford Quenqui come back kinda sudden one Saturday afternoon.’

  ‘Been a pretty sight’

  ‘Usual thing, strangled ’em both. Last I knew Mr Quenqui coolin’ at the Federal Correctional Institute in Seagoville, Texas.’

  ‘Seems nothin’ ends easy, Miss Pea.’

  ‘You really believe we can work a miracle with this colored man?’ ‘Rapture approachin’, when the most faithful is instantly transformed into holy bodies and raised up to meet the Lord in the air. Be so much confusion after, Cutie, folks left searchin’ for so many disappeared people. Mr Lamar here either be skyborne or forgot.’

  ‘Then what, Bet?’

  ‘Raptured holy brides of Miss Jesus, such as us, be rejoicin’ seven years at the weddin’ feast while the rest of the world, includin’ them that’s half-assed Christians, enters the Great Tribulation and most be slaughtered.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘’Lectrical storms, most likely, like that child on the beach at Waveland, Mississippi. The truly righteous be delivered but the unrepentant must perish. We be among the blameless, Miss Cutie. Not even one in ten be saved.’

  Cutie closed her eyes and whispered: ‘So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.’

  Big Betty slid down and licked Cutie’s erect left nipple.

  DUKE’S SUITCASE

  vernon duke douglas could not expunge from his mind the image of the two decapitated Peruvian seamen. Duke, as he was called by his friends, was thirty-six years old and unmarried. He lived in a shotgun bungalow on Coffee Street in Chalmette, a blue-collar appendage to New Orleans, where he dined regularly at Rocky and Carlo’s on St Bernard Highway. He did his solitary drinking at Checkerboard Chucky’s Change of Heart Bar in nearby Arabi, almost to Little Saigon.

  When he was off-duty, Duke devoted most of his spare time to the study of astronomy, concentrating in particular on comets. It was his ambition to one day identify and have named after him a periodic comet, such as De Chéseaux’s, Biela’s, Di Vico’s, Encke’s, Donati’s, Tuttle’s, Coggia’s, Swift’s, d’Arrest’s or the most famous of all, Halley’s.

  For a time, Duke was attracted primarily to minor planets—Ceres, Pallas, Juno, Vesta, Iris, Flora, Hygiea, Astraea, etc.—but became fascinated with Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann I when he learned that it had an orbit with an eccentricity so low that it could in fact be the orbit of a minor planet. Comets, of course, are at first sighting indistinguishable from minor planets, but between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter something strange occurs: the comet’s shape appears less distinct, and then, nearer to Mars, the comet develops its tail.

  It was Girolamo Fracastoro, one of Duke’s heroes, along with Tycho Brahe and his collaborator, Johannes Kepler, the two men responsible for establishing the laws of planetary motion, who noticed that as a comet rounds the sun the tail points away from it, pushed ahead by radioactive pressure. At perihelion, nearest to the sun, the comet may lose its tail then grow another; and although the tail is clearly visible against the night sky, it is almost ephemeral. Duke was amazed to discover that if the tail of Halley’s Comet could be compressed to the density of iron, it would fit into the smaller of his own two Samsonite suitcases.

  The heads of Ernesto and Dagoberto Reyes, Duke thought, were like comets torn from their orbits, tails eviscerated. When he read in the Times-Picayune about a series of decapitations, all of males, having occurred along the western littoral of Florida, Duke decided to take his vacation time and pursue the phenomenon. That it could, in fact, be a non-periodic activity was possible, but his instinct, informed by a decade and a half of investigative work and observation, told him that however narrow or eccentric these ellipses might be, the connection to the cantalouped pair from Callao would prove valid.

  During Roman times, Duke knew, people considered the appearance of a comet to be a bad omen, often blaming on it the subsequent loss of a battle. Duke also knew that he could not be th
e first to observe that the victors in the battle probably did not agree.

  THE BEAST

  ‘the clouds here sure are beautiful.’

  ‘Always been the most special feature of Florida, sweet pea. Sunsets, especially.’

  ‘Sky looks different from an island, I think,’ Cutie said. ‘I mean, when you’re on one. Even them jets streakin’ over, like we just lost down here, part of what the world forgot.’

  Betty laughed and hugged her friend’s shoulders.

  ‘The world won’t forget us, Miss Pea, providin’ we leave ’em enough souvenirs, evidence of our sincerity.’

  ‘We gonna tattoo Mr Lamar this mornin’?’

  ‘What I figured to do. Mark him as he must be before beginnin’ the lessons.’

  ‘And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free man and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on the forehead.’

  Big Betty nodded and responded: ‘Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for the number is that of man; and his number is six hundred and sixty-six.’

  ‘As Miss Jesus is our witness,’ said Cutie, sparks coming from her big black eyes, ‘if anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives a mark on his forehead or upon his hand, he also will drink of the urine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full-strength in the cup of Her anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels—who is us—and in the presence of the Lamb.’

  As Cutie and Betty embraced, standing nude on the porch of the Trocadero Island Rod & Gun Club, a large nimbus cloud blocked the sun.

  ‘And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever,’ said Betty; ‘and they have no rest day and night, those who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.’

  The women disengaged, stood back and regarded one another. Tears flowed simultaneously from their eyes.

  ‘How we gonna do it?’ asked Cutie.

  ‘Straight razor. One I operated with on them sailors. Still plenty sharp.’

  ‘Head or hand?’

  ‘Both. Mr Lamar’s smart. Could he’d cut off a spare appendage.’

  Cutie smiled and said, ‘You’re smarter, Bet.’

  SNOWBALLS

  ‘how about that five-hundred-pound man got caught at the Miami airport attemptin’ to smuggle more’n three hundred grams of crack cocaine under the tremendous folds of his stomach? Dogs sniffed out the dope—shepherds. Boy’ll lose most that weight in prison, prob’ly be the second best thing coulda happened to him. Come out a new man.’

  Vernon Duke Douglas glanced at his Timex. Only twenty minutes until the plane would land at Tallahassee and he would not have to listen any longer to the woman seated next to him. She was about his own age, rail-thin, a brunette with green eyes and not entirely unattractive, but she had not stopped talking since before the aircraft had taken off from New Orleans. Her name was Petronia Weatherby, and she had introduced herself to Duke by saying, ‘I’ll tell you my name, but you’ve got to promise not to ask, “What will the weather be?” Or, “What be the weather?” I hear it all the time.’ She had told Duke the purpose of her trip but he had already discharged the information from his memory bank.

  ‘Conversation makes a flight go quicker, don’t it, Mr Douglas?’ said Petronia. ‘You’re not, now it occurs to ask, by any chance related to the movie-actin’ Douglases, are you?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Wouldn’t I be somethin’ lucky, you had. Couldn’t control myself if I met someone really famous. I’d pee my pants in a whore’s hurry, I know. I’m like that. Somethin’ really wild happens? I just pee away. You know I ain’t never seen snow, for example? Ice don’t count; I mean real actual snow fall down. I ever do, I’ll pee my pants. I’d die to throw a snowball, really I would.’

  ‘Comets are snowballs,’ said Duke.

  ‘You mean those things shoot through the interplanetary air?’

  Duke nodded. ‘They’re composed of frozen gases, mostly carbon dioxide, methane or water vapor. Very little solid material. Their behavior is that of a ball of frozen gas being heated by the sun.’

  ‘I tell you, Mr Douglas, I figured you for a scientific type right off, but now I see you’re even a deeper person than most persons I’ve encountered on planes. Mind if I ask you a particularly scientific question?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Do women think different from men? I mean, their brain work another way? Technically speakin’, that is.’

  Duke laughed. ‘I can’t say, Ms Weatherby. But I do know that dialogue between men and women seems to have about the consistency of a snowball. Some contain more ice than others, of course.’

  Petronia stared hard at Duke, her green eyes narrowing. He thought she was about to hiss.

  ‘Now quick, before we land,’ she said, ‘I want to know the truth. Can there really be such a thing as a snowball in hell?’

  PIGS

  mano and boca Demente were as excited as the dogs. The cousins were less than a hundred yards from the sanitary landfill when Casanova, their catahoula, chased down a decent-sized boar, maybe three hundred-plus pounds of fighting pig, and had him backing up on a fifteen-foot-high mound of garbage. As soon as they reached the clearing, Boca released Diablo, their hundred-pound pit bull, who attacked instantly, catching the boar above the left shoulder. Diablo sank his incisors deep into the muscle and locked on while Casanova semicircled and barked, keeping the prey focussed. The infuriated boar could neither shake the pit nor reach him with his cutters, and with Diablo’s weight attached had no chance of escaping the sleek catahoula.

  Mano, unarmed, walked carefully around the snorting, frustrated swine, grabbed both hind legs and lifted them up about chest high. Boca came over, wrapped a thick length of nylon rope around the boar’s legs, tied it off, then disengaged Diablo. As Mano dropped the pig, a chunk of fur and flesh shredded off its left shoulder. The boar rolled in the dirt, snorting and belching blood from its nostrils and mouth. Mano and Boca stood several paces away, holding the dogs with their left hands, high-fiveing each other with their right palms.

  ‘ Un puerco grande, primo, hey?’ said Boca.

  ‘Make a powerful mess of rib sandwiches, seguro,’ said Mano. The cousins, now both twenty-two years old, had been boar hunting without weapons, only dogs, since they were eighteen. They each stood six feet and weighed approximately two hundred pounds. Most people assumed they were brothers, since they resembled one another so closely, both having thick black hair, brown eyes and tan complexions. During the week, the Demente cousins operated their own house-painting business in Tallahassee, and on weekends they hunted pig for sport. Usually they hunted in Taylor County, around Perry, or further south, near Chiefland; but today they’d come to new territory, Trocadero Island, and not been disappointed.

  The dogs were unmarked and Mano now took both of them back to the pickup, which was parked about a half-mile away. Boca removed his Bowie knife from its sheath, came around the squealing thing, tapping each tusk for luck with the tip of his knife as he did, and cut the rope. The pig leapt up and bounded into the woods. Boca looked at the bloodstained ground and kicked dirt over it. He picked up the torn skin and chucked it into the bushes. This was a good spot for hunting and Boca did not want to leave any obvious evidence for the game warden. He re-sheathed his knife, picked up the pieces of rope and started toward the truck. He’d created an appetite and Boca assumed his cousin had one too.

  THE BOOK OF BECOMING

  ‘drivin’ down here, what kinda sign is that we seen?’ Betty said to Rollo, whose hands and feet were bound by clothesline. He was seated in a chair. Betty and Cutie stood on either end of him, front and back.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Rollo. ‘What sign?’

  ‘One says, “Have Some Tits with Your Grits.” Advert for a bare-ass place for truckers. Club G-String. Got a chain of these joints along the
interstate. “McSex,” I call ’em. That proper? That the way this country’s supposed to go, you reckon?’

  ‘Lots wrong with the country,’ said Rollo. ‘Most obscene of all is the lack of a national health program and dwindling funds for education. Just being alive a person is entitled to the best possible health care at no individual cost and a proper education. Anything less makes a travesty of the concept of civilization.’

  ‘Listen to him talk, Bet,’ Cutie said. ‘Sounds like a lawyer.’

  ‘I am a lawyer,’ said Rollo.

  ‘Well, we’re about to lay down the law to you, Mr Lamar. Cutie, you can begin the first lesson now.’

  Cutie, who stood in front of Rollo, nodded and cleared her throat. She held in her hands a large, peach-colored loose-leaf notebook.

  ‘This here’s the Book of Becoming,’ she said, ‘the only one in existence, and we got it. Which, of course, is no mystery how that is since it was me and Bet who wrote it. We done it while we was in prison. Written between the lines of letters we got had already been censored, so we could take ’em out with us.’

  ‘Still writin’ it,’ said Big Betty.

  ‘More parts to come, most certainly.’

  ‘From the beginnin’,’ Betty instructed.

  Cutie read aloud:

  THE BOOK OF BECOMING

  Lesson One

  EVERYBODY IS A SINNER. If not for the eternal presence of Miss Jesus our Holy Mother and One True Companion we the Ordinary and mostly futile failures would never be gived a Second Chance. The Female Side is about to Explode and Destroy the Male who done most everything wrong from the Beginning. It is the Male who made the Planet dirty and devoured the Female Soul. Now we shall witness the Resurrection of the Female Soul so the Planet might could be Saved. So saith us Disciples of Miss Jesus.