Southern Nights

by Barry Gifford

  ’What’s that tune, honey?’ he asked.

  ‘Wan’ I stop?’

  ‘No, no, baby. I like it. You know the name?’

  ‘Be “Things That Make You Go Hmmmm” by C & C Music Fact’ry.’

  ‘You sure do make me go hm-m. Lean over more, precious, put your sweet tits ’gainst my cheeks.’

  ‘I gon’ be a singer, too,’ Fatima Verdad said, as she stood on her toes and lifted her breasts in her hands and rubbed the nipples on Dallas Salt’s face. ‘A real one, though, not like some girl only dance an’ preten’ to sing.’

  The preacher stroked himself faster.

  ‘I dance good as Paula Abdul, too. You like Paula Abdul? She cute but ain’ got no tiddies.’

  ‘Come around now, baby,’ said Dallas. ‘Move quick, girl!’

  Fatima, who was entirely naked except for a black velvet choker with a pearl cross on it that Sabine Yama had made her put on before bringing her in, knelt in front of Dallas Salt, as Sabine had instructed her to do when explaining the pastor’s needs, and blew gently on the head of his penis as it grew fat and red. The prostitute kept her face still while Dallas Salt’s semen pelted it, not flinching even when some flew into her left eye. After he had finished, the preacher rested for a few moments with his eyes shut, still holding his shrinking prick.

  ‘You done fine, girl,’ he said, finally, looking at Fatima Verdad. ‘Sabine!’ he shouted.

  Sabine Yama came in from just outside the door, where he had been waiting.

  ‘Show her where to clean up and give her some extra taxi money. How much time I got till the broadcast?’

  ‘About fifteen minutes.’

  Sabine handed him a towel, which Dallas used to wipe off his hand and leg.

  ‘Whew! Used to it didn’t take so long gettin’ primed,’ said Dallas, standing up.

  He watched Fatima Verdad as she stepped into her panties.

  ‘Bless you, honey,’ Dallas said. ‘Hope to hear you on the radio one of these days pretty soon.’

  Fatima smiled, showing big white teeth. ‘Be doin’ it, with God’s help.’

  Dallas nodded, and said, ‘Baby, He might could do worse.’

  NIGHTCAP AT RUBY’S CARIBBEAN

  ‘sabine, darlin’, one more of these and I’ll even go to bed with you!’

  Jimmy Sermo and Sabine Yama were at Ruby’s Caribbean Bar on Poland Avenue, drinking Bombay and listening to the jukebox. Little Johnny Taylor had just now wailed on ‘Love Bones’ and Fabrice Dos Veces, the transsexual Cuban bartender, offered a free drink to whoever would play ‘Lookin’ for a Love’ by The Valentinos. Sabine hopped down from his stool, limped over, pushed a few quarters into the Rock-Ola, and punched up Fabrice’s request, along with ‘The Things That I Used to Do’ by Guitar Slim and ‘Nite Owl’ by Tony Allen and the Champs. By the time Sabine had climbed back onto his stool, there was a fresh Bombay on the rocks with a twist of lime waiting for him.

  Gracias, Sabine,’ said Fabrice, as Bobby Womack’s sweaty voice surged into the room.

  Jimmy Sermo slid off of his stool onto the floor and stayed there, curled up in a fetal position on the brown-and-white tiles. He was a short, thin man of thirty-one, with wavy blonde hair and hazel eyes that, due to his alcoholism, were bloodshot most of the time. Jimmy and Sabine had known each other since both had been child prostitutes, and they met occasionally at Ruby’s Caribbean or the Saturn for drinks. Jimmy now worked in a laundromat on St Ann, his once angelic looks having deteriorated badly over the years. His disheveled and dissolute appearance disturbed Sabine, who had tried unsuccessfully to get Jimmy to seek the counsel of Dallas Salt.

  The last time Sabine had suggested it, Jimmy Sermo said, ‘That faggot’s your savior, not mine.’

  ‘Brother Dallas ain’t a faggot,’ Sabine replied.

  ‘All the more reason I ain’t got no time for his mess,’ Jimmy said.

  Fabrice Dos Veces, who was five-foot-two in her high heels and could barely see over the top of the bar, asked Sabine where Jimmy had got to.

  ‘Sleepin’ on the floor here, like a good boy.’

  ‘Tough for a man or a woman to get any peace these days,’ said Fabrice, wetting the tips of her index fingers with her tongue and smoothing down her thick black eyebrows before twisting them up at the ends.

  Just as Guitar Slim gave it up to Tony Allen, the door opened and in walked Terry Perez and another member of the Sisters of Clytemnestra named Dogstyle Lou. Ruby’s Caribbean was not a regular hangout for the Sisters, so Sabine and Fabrice were surprised to see them.

  ‘You serve real women in here?’ Dogstyle Lou asked Fabrice.

  ‘We serve real drinks to real people who can pay for them,’ Fabrice said. ‘I don’t guess you’d know a real woman if she squatted on this bar and pissed in your glass.’

  Dogstyle Lou, who was six-one and other than svelte, laughed hard and shook her close-cropped head.

  ‘You know, Terry,’ she said, ‘that’s what I love about New Orleans, the candor of its citizens. There really ain’t another city in this country for tellin’ it like it is, as old Aaron Neville never can quit remindin’ us.’

  Dogstyle Lou looked at Sabine Yama and then noticed Jimmy Sermo sprawled on the floor.

  ‘Nice place we done found here, though. Got a bartender don’t know if it’s Charo or Bela Lugosi, with a cadaver and a part-built dwarf for customers.’

  Terry Perez went over to Jimmy Sermo and nudged his head with the toe of her right boot.

  ‘He’s breathin’, I think,’ she said.

  Fabrice billyclubbed Dogstyle Lou so fast the large woman never saw it coming. Sabine grabbed Terry Perez around the throat with his one powerful good hand and squeezed until Terry lost consciousness, then allowed her to drop to the floor next to Jimmy Sermo and Dogstyle Lou. He swiveled back to the bar and finished his drink.

  ‘Care for another, Sabine? On the house.’

  ‘No thanks, Fabrice. I’m drivin’.’

  Sabine twirled off the barstool, stepping carefully over the bodies.

  ‘Be glad to help out here,’ he said.

  ‘Not necessary, Sabine, but thanks. I can handle it. Do me a favor, though? On your way out.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Play “Lookin’ for a Love” again.’

  ‘You got it, Fabrice.’

  Sabine dropped in a quarter, pressed the letter H and the number 8, and hit the street.

  THE VISITATION

  it was not a rat. Beatifica could tell. A rat might tip over a lamp, there would be a crash, followed by a scurrying sound. This noise was made by a larger creature, she was certain. Beatifica opened her eyes but lay completely still in the dark. There was movement accompanied by a fluttering or shuffling of some kind. At first, it sounded like wings beating, then boxes being pushed along the floor. Beatifica sat up and saw a tall, willowy shape moving slowly on the far side of her room. The shape turned sideways, and in the crooked finger of light from Decatur Street she was able to clearly discern an outline of beard, an aquiline nose. He was wearing a black frock coat, as he always had.

  ‘John!’ she said, and the figure froze.

  ‘It’s you, John, it must be. Come closer.’

  The figure turned toward the bed and took one short step, then halted.

  ‘I knew you would come to me, John. I believed that sooner or later you would offer me more than your voice in a dream. I will do what you ask, John. I have the weapon now. There is only the appropriate moment yet to choose.’

  Beatifica let down the straps of her nightgown, baring her breasts. She spread wide her arms and beckoned with her fingers to the paralyzed form.

  ‘Take me, John,’ she pleaded. ‘Long, long have I been only yours. Make love to me now, quickly, while the moonlight lasts.’

  Beatifica rose and went to him, took hold of his coat and pulled him to the bed, drawing him down upon her.

  ‘John Brown’s body lies with me!’ she shouted, as her visit
or began to move of his own volition.

  BEGUILED

  ‘“the serpent beguiled me, and I did eat,” said Eve. Accordin’ to Genesis, anyway. But was it the truth? I say, was woman beguiled?- Was she in all ways deceived? I think not, people. When Eve partook of the apple, she bit off more’n she could chew, now didn’t she? And, folks, I’ll tell you—not that you need to be told, but to let you know you’re not isolated in your thinkin’—there is no such a thing as an immaculate deception. No such a thing! A woman knows what she’s doin’ when she does somethin’, same as a man. There ain’t no difference, none at all. When a woman has sexual intercourse with a man, she knows, has prior knowledge, that amongst the results of the commission of the act could be the conception of a child. And once that life exists it has rights just like you or me, foremost of which is the fundamental right to live. If you kill that baby, that’s murder. Period.

  ‘Now, I know those who call themselves “pro-choicers” say, “What if the pregnancy is the result of a rape?” Or, “What if you know the child is defective?” Or, “What if the birth poses a threat to the life of the mother?” Or, “What if the parents are too poor to support it?” Well, I’ll tell you, people—again, not that you need to be told killin’ is killin’. It’s right up there at the top of the list with “Thou shalt not steal” and all the rest, isn’t it? “Thou shalt not kill.” You go to them cops ’n’ robbers movies, or watch them silly TV shows, or read comic books like The Punisher, I know. I do it, too. And it’s fun because why? Because you know it’s not real! There’s your difference! And it means everything concernin’ what we’re talkin’ about tonight.

  ‘I am aware that when I speak to you-all about this that I am preachin’ to the already converted, except that most of you ain’t had to be converted. No, most all of you had the good sense to have it down straight from the get-go. So this is all I mean to say anymore about it. What needs discussin’ is how to make the blind to see and cause the lame to walk unaided. Blessed be the one hand that cleanses the other. How can one hand do the job right if it don’t know what the other hand is doin’? The meal cannot be properly prepared if one hand be steady and the other hand be unsteady. People, prayer alone ain’t enough to accomplish this task. You-all got a mighty load of fearsome studyin’ to do!’

  Beatifica Brown turned off the radio. Arranged tip to end in a circle in front of where she knelt on the floor staring at them were the six sixteen-inch aluminum arrows she had purchased with the air gun from Elvis Steck. In the center of the circle of arrows was the Stealth weapon itself, zoom scope attached.

  In her flat on Pauger Street, Dilys Salt listened to the sign-off of her brother’s midnight broadcast. ‘You have been listening to WGOD,’ said the announcer, ‘the voice of God in New Orleans.’ Dilys missed Terry Perez, who was in the hospital with a severely bruised windpipe. She picked up a book of Terry’s that was on the bedside table, Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire. Dilys opened it at random and read: ‘De Satan ou de Dieu, qu ’importe?’

  MS BROWN TO YOU

  easy earl eased himself out from behind the wheel of his Mercury Monarch and stood next to the car, stretching his back. The years of loading and unloading bags of mail were taking a toll on his sacrum and ilium. It was time, Earl realized, to find an easier way to make a living. If he could get an industrial injury judgment from a Postal Service-approved doctor, Earl knew, he would have a medical pension coming to him for the rest of his life; plus plenty of time to figure out ways to supplement that income. As soon as his lower back loosened up, Earl Blakey walked into the High Heaven and propped himself up on a stool.

  ‘Crown Royal and milk?’ asked the bartender, a new man Earl had not seen before.

  ‘How’d you know?’

  ‘Bufor’ tip me. Said you come in reg’lar. Straight-haired brother with a Ray Robinson mustache. I’m Maceo.’

  ‘CR an’ milk’ll do, Maceo. What happen to Buford?’

  ‘Havin’ a molar pull.’

  Maceo set Earl’s drink on the bar.

  ‘You seen a small, brown, not-too-ugly woman ’bout my age come in?’

  Maceo shook his clean head no.

  ‘Good. I ain’t missed her then.’

  Maceo went off to attend another customer and Earl looked up at the television set above the bar. A perfectly coiffed newscaster, whose light brown hair appeared to have been spray-painted on his head, was talking. The way the man’s hair was parted, Earl thought, made it look like a sand trap on a dogleg par four, possibly five.

  ‘A federal appeals court refused today to put the nation’s strictest anti-abortion law on the fast track to the United States Supreme Court. The US Court of Appeals in New Orleans denied motions by the state attorney general to expedite a hearing on the issue and to certify issues in the case for immediate Supreme Court review. The three-judge panel gave no reasons for the decision.

  ‘The law passed by the Louisiana State Legislature this summer would send doctors who perform abortions to jail for up to ten years with fines of up to one hundred thousand dollars. It would allow abortions only to save a mother’s life or, under strict guidelines, in cases where pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.’

  Earl sipped on his Crown Royal and milk, then set it down, pulled up a Kool from the pack in his breast pocket and stuck it between his lips. He waited until the newscaster completed the report on the abortion issue before bothering to light his cigarette.

  ‘A US district judge earlier this month ruled that the Louisiana law was unconstitutional. The judge’s decision effectively blocked its enforcement until and unless a higher court reverses him. The attorney general stated today: “Louisiana’s position is that the state has not only a rational basis but also a compelling state interest in protecting the life of the unborn.”’

  Earl picked up a pack of matches that were on the bar, struck one, touched it to the dangling tip of the Kool and inhaled deeply. He looked at the matchbook and read the words that were printed on the cover. earn big bucks writing poetry! call 1-800-rimbaud. Earl had arranged to meet Beatifica at the High Heaven in order to pay her the last of what was owed for Rita’s abortion. The woman certainly had done right by Rita, Earl thought, and been nothing but patient concerning remuneration.

  ‘You don’t mind I shut this peckerwood down?’ Maceo said to Earl, as he reached up and silenced the news. ‘Heard about enough of women’s troubles.’

  Maceo’s question obviously having been of a rhetorical nature, Earl refrained from comment. The bartender went around the bar to the jukebox, dropped in a handful of change and punched a bunch of numbers. The ghostly wail of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s steel guitar playing on ‘Hillbillies from Outer Space’ put a decidedly different spin on the atmosphere.

  ‘That ought should make your drink taste better,’ said Maceo, coming back across from Earl. ‘Need a refill yet?’

  Easy Earl smiled, exposing the seven gold teeth he had paid two grand for to replace his natural ones that a man named DeSoto Sturgis had knocked out of Earl’s head with a dog’s-head walking stick during an altercation at an after-hours spot called Wig Hat Tippo’s up in Itawamba County, Mississippi, twenty years before. Earl had heard shortly thereafter that DeSoto Sturgis was residing for the time being on death row in Angola for shooting out a white woman’s eyes in a Bossier City hotel room. Earl did not know for certain if DeSoto Sturgis actually had been electrocuted or not, but he assumed the sentence had been carried out, seeing as how the state of Louisiana had hardly ever hesitated to execute white trash, let alone black men the caliber of DeSoto Sturgis.

  ‘Pour one more,’ Earl said to Maceo. ‘I ain’t got no new business with this woman I’m waitin’ on.’

  Maceo laughed, displaying his own array of metallic replacement parts. Spying them, Earl figured there had been a DeSoto Stulgis or two in Maceo’s past as well.

  ‘You think that,’ the bartender said, ‘the woman got you right where she want you.’

&nbs
p; Easy Earl grinned again and finished off his first CR and milk. Texas steel guitar notes ricocheted inside his cerebral hemispheres.

  ‘Mostly, I say you be right. But this one, uh uh. She walkin’ on higher ground.’

  ‘Mm, mm, Mr Earl. Then bet you a Negro dollar we be hearin’ her name on the TV news.’

  Earl nodded and said, ‘Had me bigger surprises, Maceo, but okay. You on.’

  THE AWAKENING

  when beatifica was seven years old, an incident occurred the memory of which stayed with her for the remainder of her life. Her father had some business with a man on Okaloosa Street near Nebraska Avenue, and he took his young daughter along with him. It was an extremely hot Sunday afternoon in late August, and as they drove in German Moreno’s powder blue Ford Galaxie north through Tampa from Ybor City, the section of town in which they lived, it seemed to Beatifica as if the entire city were on fire. The hazy air was yellow with brown particles floating in it, and the little girl felt like she imagined her goldfish, Bandido, did when the water in his bowl needed to be changed.

  At the intersection of Buffalo and Nebraska, a naked man ran out in front of German Moreno’s car. German jammed on his brakes, causing Beatifica, who was riding in the front passenger seat and was not wearing a seat belt, to be thrown forward against the dashboard. She cut open her forehead and bruised her nose, but otherwise was unhurt. Beatifica sat back and saw that the naked man, who had long, stringy brown hair and a beard, and was so skinny that the outlines of his bones were visible beneath his skin, was sitting on the hood of her father’s Ford. The man was staring directly at her with his unblinking red eyes and sticking out his thick black tongue, which he wagged from side to side.