Southern Nights

by Barry Gifford

  ‘My ambition is to be a writer of fiction. I never have got other than a A in English since the fourth grade. I am what is commonly called a keen observer, which means, of course, that I notice details most everyone else don’t. Eyeglasses don’t bother me. I got ’em five years ago, when I was nine, to perk up my left eye, which is lazy. But my own good guess is that it’s the one sees the really important things and the right eye is mostly used to get me from here to there. The eye is a photoreceptor, which means a camera if you can capture what you see and store the image in the cortex, which is the outer layer of the anterior cerebral hemispheres of the brain. My cortex is overflowin’ with captives, such as black vomit, one of the most serious symptoms of yellow fever, which I seen a film of victims of in the eighth grade and never forgot, nor will I. It’s bound to come in useful for a novel or story before I’m through. Where are you goin’?’

  ‘Tampa,’ said Earl.

  ‘You’ll have to transfer to another bus, then, because this one goes straight through to Jacksonville. Did they tell you that at the terminal? Sometimes people don’t volunteer information very readily.’

  Earl nodded. ‘Uh huh. Change in Lake City.’

  ‘Did I tell you my name? Marble Lesson? Of course, I did. My daddy’s name is Wesson, so people call him Wes. My mama’s first name is Bird. Her first last name was Arden, like the forest. Then, as you know, it was Lesson. Now it’s Doig, which she says nobody can pronounce properly when they see it, so she gets called Bird Dog a lot in Jacksonville. What’s yours?’

  ‘Earl.’

  ‘Oh my friends they call me Speedo but my real name is Mister Earl.’

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘Song Mama used to sing me when I was little.’

  ‘Oh yeah, yeah. I kinda do remember it.’

  Earl dosed his eyes.

  ‘You appear to be tired, Mr Earl.’

  ‘Guess I am, Miz Lesson.’

  ‘Call me Marble, please.’

  ‘Miz Marble. You don’t mind awfully, I’mo sneak on out here fo’ bit, get some res’.’

  ‘I’ll wake you up if you’re asleep when we get to Lake City, though I doubt you will be since it’s hours away.’

  Earl pulled the black corduroy bunny cap down over his eyes and drifted into a dreamscape where Rita, wearing black lace underwear, was standing over a fiery pit poking at something with a long stick. Earl tried to see what was in the pit, but he could not raise himself high enough. Rita kept jabbing with the stick, and then she speared an object and lifted it out of the pit, gripping the stick with both hands. She held up a charred baby, its limbs outstretched but motionless. Pieces of the corpse flaked off and were carried away by the wind until there was nothing left. Rita dropped the stick into the fire.

  SOMETHING SPECIAL

  BUS CRASHES, BURNS IN LIGHTNING STORM

  gulfport, jan. 21 (sns)—A Grey-hound bus, en route from Baton Rouge, La., to Jacksonville, Fla., was struck by lightning yesterday during a thunderstorm at approximately four P.M. as it traveled on Interstate 10 north of Bay St Louis, Miss. The strike caused the bus to crash into a roadside ditch, killing twelve passengers and the driver, who was identified as Dio Bolivar, 42, of Phenix City, Ala.

  Witnesses said it appeared that the secondary channel of a double bolt of ground lightning struck the bus, which was several miles away from the primary channel that destroyed a railroad bridge-tender’s shack just west of Waveland, Miss.

  Ten of the eleven survivors were injured, some seriously, and were taken to nearby hospitals for treatment. The only passenger who emerged unhurt was Marble Lesson, 14, of Bayou Goula, La.

  Interviewed at the scene, Miss Lesson, who was traveling alone, told rescuers, ‘A violet vein of hellfire reached down inside the bus and cooked them folks. There was a nice black man sitting next to me and all of a sudden he lit up like a Christmas tree. It was pretty spectacular.

  ‘I don’t know why I was spared, except perhaps the Lord has something special planned for me to accomplish in life.’

  JESUS SEES US

  DEAR JESUS,

  There is no doubt in my brain that it was a direct act of God that I am alive and in fact did escape unscathed and unscarred from the bus crash that took so many lives of the innocent and injured so many others. That I am safe now in the home of my mama Bird Arden and her second husband Fernando Doig on Trout River Boulevard in Jacksonville Florida a town about which I know practically nothing at all since I am a recent arrival is without question a miracle. The Earth cannot turn fast or slow enough to disturb me as I am at this moment as of now undisturbable.

  In case You may not know very much about me though I believe You observe us all let me explain just who it is is writing You this letter. I am Marble Lesson (no middle name) 14 years old. Until now I lived in Bayou Goula Louisiana the state where my daddy Wes still lives. Now I have come to live with my mama and it was while traveling here on the Greyhound that the accident occurred that convinced me of Your investment in me. Writing is how I have chosen to justify Your faith and commitment. You may ask what can a 14 year old girl of The South have to say that You should pay any attention to? I believe writing is a process of self discovery and each thought is my own. Stick with me Jesus You may hear something You never thought of Yourself.

  I am concerned about the World Condition not only as things are in my own country of the United States of America but all over the globe. One thing I would like to know is if You see what is going on on other planets or just Earth? A few days ago before I left Bayou Goula on that fateful trip I wrote a song I wish You could hear me sing but maybe You can when I do anyway here are the words.

  Jesus sees us even when we’re bad

  And every time I think of that

  It makes me feel so glad

  Gives me the finest feeling

  That I ever have had

  Oh Jesus sees us even when we’re bad

  In time I plan to add more verses but I thought as long as I have it this far and I am writing to You anyhow You would be interested.

  There is a black man staying with our family now at the house who is a friend of Fernando Doig. The black man’s name is Mr Rollo Lamar and he and Fernando are lawyers. They are working together for a women’s group in the state of Florida that is pro choice which means they are for allowing women to decide for themselves as individuals whether or not to have a baby. I am only 14 but I do not understand how anyone can tell anyone else what to do with their own body. Personally I do not know what I would do if I was pregnant and did not want the baby either have an abortion or have the baby and give it out for adoption like Lástima Denuedo did back in Bayou Goula at the age of 15 however I would want to be able to choose for myself which is only fair. Others of course do not agree.

  Last night at dinner Mr Lamar told Fernando and Mama and me about a trial up in Georgia where a man wore his Ku Klux Klan costume which includes a white robe like one You wore when You were here on Earth and a pointy hood and a mask. This man wore this outfit of the Klan which is a group who hate Jewish people (I know You are one) and black and other peoples of color and Catholic persuasion and are against abortion in any form I am sure to test a law that says it is illegal to wear a mask in public. Of course at Mardi Gras in New Orleans where I have been many times people always wear masks so it is no surprise to me that the Ku Klux Klan person won the case. The argument against him was that wearing the costume and mask was intended to strike fear and terror into the minds of the Jewish and Catholic and black people of the town where he did it. My thinking about masks is that if every person wore the same kind of mask and all looked alike then people would have to deal with who the other person really is on their insides and maybe it would not be such a horrible idea to try someday. That way you would not know if another person is even black or white underneath the mask it is just a person. What do You think?

  It is very late at night now and I am pretty sleepy so I will stop here. My plan is to continue w
riting letters to You until I know where to send them or can deliver them in person. All for now.

  Sincerely, your friend

  Marble Lesson

  part four

  the crime of

  marble lesson

  I am breached by fate,

  Wrecked, swept away by storm. You’ll pay the price,

  Poor people, with your sacrilegious blood.

  This wickedness will haunt you, and the grim

  Punishment . . . will come home to you,

  But it will be too late to pray the gods.

  —Virgil, The Aeneid

  CONTENTS

  The Good Samaritan

  The Mission

  Sisters

  Bird Calls

  Good People

  Bunk

  The Blink of an Eye

  Sticking with Jesus

  THE GOOD SAMARITAN

  wesson lesson staggered out of the Saturn Bar into the street. After losing his job in New Roads, Wes had come to New Orleans to visit his brother, Webb, only to learn that Webb had been arrested and jailed for operating a tax scam involving false bills of sale for automobiles. This swindle landed Webb a ten spot at the Atchafalaya Correctional Facility, to which he was sent a week after Wes got to town.

  Wes moved into his brother’s house on Rocheblave Street and immediately thereafter fell off the wagon on which he had been a brief passenger. His heavy drinking and abusive behavior had cost him his wife, Bird, and their daughter, Marble, and any number of oil field jobs. He was thirty-nine years old, looked fifty, and was definitely headed down the road feeling bad.

  Wobbling on the corner of St Claude Avenue and Clouet Street at two o’clock in the morning, Wes Lesson was suddenly overcome by feelings of guilt about having failed his family, and he dropped to his knees and wept. Marble, who was now fourteen, had gone to live with Bird and her new husband, an attorney named Fernando Doig, in Jacksonville, Florida, and Wes despaired of ever seeing his only child again. He knew he was no good, had mistreated the one woman he had truly loved, forcing her to leave him, and now his beloved daughter was also beyond his touch. Wes lay crumpled up on the broken sidewalk, sobbing, oblivious to the perilous position he was in.

  ‘Best be gettin’ on your feet, fella,’ a large, moon-faced man said, as he reached down to assist Wes Lesson. ‘You must ain’t be up on the local geography. Natives have you skinned in fifteen minutes, spear through your ear, I leave you be.’

  The man, who appeared to be in his mid-fifties but was still built like a middle linebacker in his prime, lifted Wes with one arm and looked at his puffy face and bloodshot eyes.

  ‘Bud, you in a ugly condition. I’ll take you to home, you got one.’

  ‘Rochebla’ Stree’,’ Wes said, struggling to stand on his own.

  The big man guided Wes to a midnight blue Buick Roadmaster and stuffed him into the front passenger seat, closed the door, then went around to the driver’s side and slid behind the wheel.

  ‘Don’t know how a man can let this happen to him,’ the driver said, as he pulled the Buick into the sparse traffic on St Claude. ‘You smell bad, boy. It’s the stink of defeat.’

  All Wes Lesson could do was groan. He barely heard what his savior of the moment was saying.

  ‘My name’s Defillo Humble. Maybe you’ve heard of me. Wrote a book some years ago did a little. Twenty weeks on the Picayune best-seller list. Negroes with Cars. About how the African American’s access to the automobile drove the final nail into the coffin of the Old South. I’m workin’ on a new one now, The Unnecessary Passing of the Southern Woman. You can pretty much guess what-all it’s about.’

  Wes Lesson was incapable of intelligent or intelligible response. He was only vaguely aware of what was happening, and when the car stopped in front of his brother’s house, Wes could do no better than open the passenger door and drop onto the street. Defillo Humble got out and came around, picked him up and half-carried him to the porch, where he deposited Wes on the top step.

  ‘Best I intend to do, pardner,’ said Defillo Humble. ‘Whatever it is you’re afraid of, there’s worse. Mister, unless you’ve been forced to eat rodent sushi from the scooped-out skull of a Liberian rebel soldier, like I have, or had a twenty-foot-long anaconda jump into your dugout and swallow half of your five-year-old son before you could put a nine-millimeter round through the serpent’s ganglion, like happened to me, you ain’t got a clean bone to pick, I don’t reckon. I’ll get back by sometime, check on you.’

  Deffillo Humble walked to his Roadmaster, got in and drove away. Before the big man got to the next corner, Wes Lesson had fallen asleep right where Defillo had dropped him.

  THE MISSION

  DEAR JESUS,

  Daddy called tonight from N.O. where he has gone to live after things didn’t work out up at New Roads like he thought but Mama would not allow me to speak with him so I ran upstairs and quietly picked up the extension and listened to their conversation. Jesus it was so awful! Daddy was crying and begging Mama to send me back there to him he doesn’t have anyone and he might as well be dead he said. Also Uncle Webb is gone to jail for ten years and Mama said it was about time maybe someone inside the walls will kill him and save the state the trouble.

  My tears were running down my face and into the little holes in the mouth part of the telephone and I couldn’t stop them. I am sure even You would have been upset at hearing Daddy cry like that. Mama screamed that he was never no good and if I went back there he would probably beat me up some night when he got drunk so Mama swore he would never ever see me again if she could help it. Daddy would not beat on me Jesus I know this.

  Jesus when I was with Daddy he did not take a drink the whole time and we done fine together. Now I could tell he had been drinking again and I know if I was with him he would not be so You guessed it I am going to N.O. He is staying in Uncle Webb’s house which I know the address so that will not be a problem finding it. The problem is to get there. Since I don’t have enough money for a bus I have decided to hitch hike a dangerous decision. I suppose but the choice is mine I believe not Mama’s. I do not have any friends to speak of in Jacksonville anyway yet so there is nobody here to miss me. Tomorrow instead of going to school I will take a detour.

  Please Jesus protect me on the highway on my mission to Daddy. He is not a bad man and needs me more than Mama does so I got to go he don’t have another soul to help him. Jesus keep me safe so I won’t be sorry.

  Your friend,

  Marble

  SISTERS

  ‘thank you, ma’am. Didn’t think anybody was gonna stop for me.’

  Marble pushed away her white-blonde bangs and smiled at the woman driver who had just picked her up. The woman was black, kind of old—in her sixties, Marble guessed—and she was wearing a hot pink pants suit, rhinestone-decorated dark glasses and a sombrero-type hat with yellow and green feathers sticking out of it. She was driving a brand-new black Cadillac Eldorado with cream leather interior.

  ‘How long have you been waiting, child?’ the driver asked. She had an unusually deep voice for a woman, Marble thought.

  ‘Hour or more, I guess.’

  Marble wore red jeans, a red sweatshirt, red high-top sneakers and her tanker jacket with the orange side out. She had dressed this way not only for comfort but so that she would be more readily spotted by drivers. Marble carried only her blue school backpack, which was stuffed with extra clothes, toiletries, writing pads and pens.

  ‘It is definitely out of the ordinary to see a young lady such as yourself hitchhiking on the entry ramp to the interstate. I’m surprised a state trooper didn’t pick you up.’

  ‘Didn’t see one. How far are you goin’?’

  ‘My destination is Chattahoochee, where I’m going to visit my son, who is a resident of the institution there. What about yourself?’

  ‘I’m goin’ to see my daddy in New Orleans.’

  ‘My land, all the way to New Orleans, Louisiana! That’s quite
a long distance to hitchhike. I don’t mean to pry, but do your parents know that you’re doing this?’

  ‘No, ma’am, they don’t. But my daddy’s in a mess and I gotta go to him. He ain’t got but me, really. Mama’s with a new man now, and she and Daddy don’t get along very well.’

  ‘I know how these things are,’ the driver said, nodding her head. ‘My name is Mrs Arapaho White. What’s yours?’

  ‘Marble Lesson.’

  ‘And how old are you, Marble?’

  ‘Fourteen.’

  ‘Well, Marble, I am fifty years older than you are, but I can clearly recall what I was like at your age. In fact, fourteen was one of the most important years of my life.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Oh, my land! That was when I first really knew that I was a girl trapped in a boy’s body.’

  ‘Huh? Trapped how?’

  ‘On the exterior I was male, but on the interior I was female. After I figured out that God had made the mistake, things became much easier for me.’

  ‘You mean like other kids made fun of you before then?’ ‘Honey, that was the least of it. No, I mean that I was very confused. I was attracted to boys just like any other girl, only I looked like a boy.’

  ‘I can certainly see how that could have caused some problems.’

  ‘Did it! Leave me alone with that!’

  ‘So what did you do? I mean, when you were fourteen.’

  ‘Just decided to live my life as a woman. Didn’t want no operations, either, so’s I would altogether resemble a woman. I was pleased with my body and didn’t want some doctor cuttin’ on it. There was no reason, I figured, not to simply carry on as I was.