Southern Nights

by Barry Gifford

  Spit crumpled the newspaper and tossed it aside.

  ‘Be double damn if this planet ain’t already loaded with surplus crazy bastards per square inch,’ he said aloud. ‘End’s near they start lettin’ in ones from outer space.’

  MOVING RIGHT ALONG

  ‘you are looking wonderful, Sally, as usual.’

  ‘Why, thank you, Zvatiff. I’m not entirely displeased to see that you are still alive, either.’

  Sally Blaine and Zvatiff Thziz-Tczili sat together at a table against the wall in Galatoire’s. This was their first meeting since both had established residences in New Orleans, Zvatiff having only very recently taken an apartment in the Garden District from which to direct Klarence Krotz’s campaign in the southern portion of the state. They had first met and become acquainted, of course, in Washington, D.C., but had not been in touch since the death of Rantoul ‘Bingo’ Blaine. Following up on Klarence’s interest in Presciencia Espanto, Zvatiff’s investigation had disclosed her relationship with Sally Blaine, and subsequently he had arranged a meeting with the widow of the deceased senator.

  The former lobbyist for the Eastern European sardine industry ordered turtle soup, pork chops, and hearts of palm. The televangelist’s mistress requested salad only.

  ‘You are quite trim as it is,’ said Zvatiff. ‘Why not have something more?’

  Sally laughed, and replied, ‘Remember what Jack Kerouac said: “I’d rather be thin than famous.”’

  ‘Who is this person who speaks such absurdities?’

  ‘A novelist’

  ‘Ach,’ said Thziz-Tczili, frowning as he raised his wine-glass, ‘novels! I never read them.’

  As Zvatiff and Sally Blaine lunched and arranged a suitable time and place for Precious and Klarence to rendezvous, Cleon Tone stood in the Maria Callas Memorial Launderette on Conti Street reading a flyer tacked to the bulletin board next to a washing machine in which the backslidden reverend had deposited his clothes.

  ‘El-Majik Speaks!’ Cleon read. ‘Do Not Let This Happen To You! Where are the people who have disappeared? Every year countless people disappear without a trace never to be seen again and it is never reported. Why? I am convinced that they are the victims of Followers of Elohim, an evil, extraterrestrial anti-Human that is heavy into organized crime who practice ritual murder on a massive scale and sell the flesh to fast-food chains to make hamburgers out of and in this way dispose of the evidence.

  ‘What these people do is entrap persons looking for sex, then kill them in a very sadistic manner and these things are generally done fairly close to the fast-food restaurant. Another method is that they buy children from poor whites whom abduct the children from school yards, daycare centers and even from their parents by pretending to be health care workers or from the child protection agency. Usually it is black children who are the victims. These people generally target single mothers who have problems to begin with or welfare recipients who no one would believe, and that I am convinced is the reason they have artificially created a high birth rate among welfare recipients. If we do not stop it, no one else will.

  ‘Why do the criminals get all the breaks? Why does the law only protect the other guy? Why does every TV show concern crime? The answer is that the Elohim are running the media and using it to create an unusually high crime rate in order to have an excuse to take your freedom away. The Elohim are Outer Planetary parasites who hide themselves among us. They often profess to be either Jews or Christians but they are not. They manipulate political candidates such as KKK and espouse insane notions via false prophets.

  ‘I am convinced that the media has a secret archive where the Elohim keep movies of an anti-Semitic and anti-Christian nature and blackmail the clergy of this nation and Rome for millions in order to keep them off the air.

  ‘The Elohim used Saddam Hussein to kill Kurds and use the hides for leather and sell the flesh to fast-food chains to make hamburgers out of. Elohim like to ingest live human sperm and vomit caviar that hatches into maggots that eat mulberry leaves and spin cocoons and hatch into full-grown people who do the same.

  ‘The Elohim have schools in Russia and Romania that train people to manipulate the human mind and send them over here to cause unstable people to commit acts of violence to use as an excuse to enslave the public. They are trying to create a junkie work force that they only have to pay in drugs. Where will it all end?

  ‘Salemm’ Aleikoum. Yours in peace everlasting, El-Majik.’

  ‘Dis yo wash?’

  Cleon Tone turned and confronted a humpbacked old lady about four and a half feet tall with a black patch over her right eye. The front part of her scalp was completely bald and dotted with scabs.

  ‘Ah look yoost, yaw done. Done stop, see?’

  Cleon opened the lid and unloaded his few articles of clothing.

  ‘All yours, ma’am,’ he said to the woman, who cackled.

  ‘We dogs,’ she said, wagging her head. ‘Watch yo ass, mist, watch yo ass. God dog git it, haw!’

  BUGS

  it was not Rebel Ray Bob’s custom to return to his shop once he had closed it, but he had forgotten to take with him earlier in the evening a shortwave radio he intended to fool with. He was convinced that some of the languages he heard on it had to be coming in from outer space. There was no way, he figured, a human being on planet Earth could work their mouth around some of those sounds. It was eleven minutes past midnight when Ray Bob unlocked, entered, and then closed the front door. Three seconds later, before he could turn on a light, a blunt object—a chunk of heavy glass with the word MIZZOU decaled on it in gold letters over a black and gold drawing of a snarling tiger—permanently wrinkled the unsuspecting owner’s right temple, causing his immediate collapse onto the brown-stained cedar board floor.

  ‘Wad you hid ’im wid?’

  ‘Ashtray.’

  Ice D knelt next to the prone pawn king and closely inspected his head.

  ‘He fix, Spit. Fix permanen’. Maybe bes’ we carry ’im out back way we come in.’

  ‘No,’ said Spit Spackle, slipping the murder weapon into the canvas sack that already held the several guns and ammunition he and D had swiped from the store. ‘Bugs be on him too quick. Cop scientists use insects now to establish time of the crime.’

  ‘Insex? How you know dis?’

  ‘Read it in a magazine in the prison library. Dead body lyin’ outside attracts enough blowflies and flesh flies to lay thousands of eggs in the mouth, nose, and ears within ten minutes of death. The eggs hatch about twelve hours later into maggots that feed on tissues. When the maggots is done, they crawl off the body and cocoon in the soil around it. Then comes more bugs, beetles usually, that chow down on the dryin’ out skin. After them it’s spiders, mites, and millipedes that feast on the insects. Best we just leave him.’

  ‘Damn!’

  Ice D stood up and the two fugitives took off out the front. Spit slammed the door behind them, dislodging from the wall next to it a framed sign that flipped faceup onto Rebel Ray Bob’s back. It read: if assholes could fly, this place would be an airport.

  THE RING OF TRUTH

  ‘what time do we meet these gentlemen?’

  ‘Six. Suite at the Monteleone.’

  ‘Little higher, please, Sal. It’s always where the wings was itches most.’

  Presciencia Espanto stretched her brown form to its full length. She lay flat on her stomach on the bed while Sally Blaine straddled the hottest female televangelist since Dilys Salt and massaged her back. Both women were entirely nude, having spent most of the afternoon making love and sleeping.

  ‘It still rainin’?’

  Sally glanced out the closest window.

  ‘Course, Precious. Wouldn’t be New Orleans if it weren’t raining.’

  ‘This Krotz is a racist, Sally. Used to was the Big Goofus himself of the Holy Order of Everlasting Yahoos. What’s in it for us?’

  The deceased senator’s widow kneaded her amour’s tight little m
ilk chocolate shoulders and said, ‘Man runnin’ his campaign’s an old D.C. warrior, hon, name of Zvatiff Thziz-Tczili. Zvatiff helped out Bingo lots of times, special most on the baitfish bill. Remember the scandal when Buster Bustelo, junior senator from New Mexico, was caught with a ten-year-old Vietnamese girl in a Baltimore hotel room?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Well, that was Zvatiff’s setup. Buster wasn’t a bad guy, but he wanted too much in exchange for the use of White Sands as a nuclear waste dumping ground. He was going to kill Bingo’s baitfish bill in committee unless Bayou Enterprises deposited a half-million dollars in a numbered Swiss account. It was really the limit. I mean, it’s one thing to be dirty, it’s another to be that greedy. So Bingo went to Thziz-Tczili, and the old Bulgarian took care of it.’

  Presciencia rolled over onto her back and looked up at Sally Blaine.

  ‘You’ve got great tits, Sal. Wish mine were bigger.’

  Sally laughed, bent over, and kissed Precious gently on the lips.

  ‘You’ve got a greater commodity, darlin’, one that won’t shrivel up or fall, neither. Your vision’s bigger than anyone’s.’

  ‘What did Bingo have to do for this Bulgarian?’

  ‘Made sure Louisiana exempted imported sardines from state tax.’

  ‘Politics ain’t for them that’s weak in the stomach, Sal, I know. What’s this Klarence Krotz think I could do for him?’

  ‘I’m sure he means to try to get the endorsement of the Church of the Ungrateful. He needs more than the white vote to get elected. He’ll want to stand next to you on the broadcasts.’

  ‘Forget it,’ said Presciencia, sitting up, forcing Sally to dismount ‘The No Chingues guys wouldn’t let it happen. They’d stomp him.’

  Sally Blaine shook a Belair menthol from a pack on the bed table, struck a match to it, and inhaled deeply.

  ‘Presh,’ she said, exhaling, ‘don’t set your mind. Might be we’ll need a favor of the sardine man down the line. Life’s full of fancy surprises, and some not so fancy, a bunch of which not even you can pick up on in advance. Let’s just let it play. What is it James says about people being friends or enemies?’

  ‘“Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.”’

  ‘That’s it. And didn’t both John and Matthew say, “You will gain a greater Friend”? Give these folks a chance, pet. By the way, you got a title yet for that book you’re writin’ about your father?’

  ‘I’m thinkin’ of callin’ it He Tasted Death for Me. From Romans.’

  Sally smoked and nodded, then said, ‘I like it, Presh. It’s got the nasty ring of truth.’

  At 6:10, Sally and Presciencia presented themselves at the door of room 603 at the Monteleone Hotel on Royal Street. It was the candidate himself who greeted the two women.

  ‘Miz Blaine, Miz Espanto, please come in. This is a very great pleasure.’

  Seated in an armchair near the windows was Zvatiff Thziz-Tczili. The corpulent veteran of politics and pederasty did not stand, merely raised his left hand slightly as Klarence placed the visitors together on a red silk-covered love seat. Krotz offered them drinks, which they declined, and then deposited himself in a plush wing chair opposite Zvatiff, facing the women.

  ‘It’s a pleasure and an honor, Miz Espanto, to meet you,’ Klarence said. ‘I’m an ardent viewer of your broadcasts. May I add, also, that you are even more attractive in person than on television.’

  Presciencia did not return Klarence’s smile. She looked into Krotz’s deep-set yellow-blue eyes and saw rows of buildings burn and collapse. She stood up.

  ‘You must pardon me, Mr Krotz,’ said the prophetess, ‘but I cannot stay.’

  Presciencia walked out of the room without a word to or a glance at Sally Blaine, who remained in the love seat. Klarence sat perfectly still, staring after Precious.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Sally, ‘she just gets nervous sometimes.’

  ‘Miz Espanto’s a special type person,’ Klarence said. ‘Sensitive. I don’t take it personal.’

  ‘That’s up to you, Mr Krotz.’

  BEYOND ONTOLOGY

  tyrone atrevido had followed Presciencia Espanto from Albuquerque to Baton Rouge. Tyrone was one of the members of the No Chingues Con Nosotros attached to the prophetess as a bodyguard. He had accompanied her with Sally to the meeting at the Monteleone, waited in the hotel corridor, and when Precious walked out of the room, Tyrone trailed her.

  There were times when Precious simply wanted to walk anonymously through the streets. Her gift of seeing had also become a burden of sorts. She occasionally needed to shed the self she had allowed to form, this being the creation from which the girl Presciencia Espanto felt detached. It was, she realized at these moments, a recognition of control, of the loss of her ability to act spontaneously. Walking out of the hotel room just now had been necessary to maintaining her sanity.

  As Tyrone followed closely behind La Preciosa, his five-foot-eight-inch, 280-pound body demanded most of the sidewalk space. He had no idea where she was going and he did not ask. Tyrone’s role was to make certain no harm befell the prophetess, and to that purpose he carried two handguns—a matched pair of pearl-handled Colt Pythons—three hand grenades, and a Tanto boot knife.

  Grenades were Tyrone’s specialty. At one time he had worked for the Albuquerque post office and heard through the grapevine that he was about to be laid off. The next day Tyrone placed two grenades in his lunch box and opened it on his supervisor’s desk. ‘Lay me off,’ he told his superior, ‘and I’ll blow you up.’ Tyrone was not laid off, but he was subsequently arrested and charged with intent to commit bodily harm and/or murder and attempted blackmail. He plea-bargained the beef down to possession of a deadly weapon and spent eleven months in the Bernalillo County lockup. Tyrone emerged from jail a legend with a new nickname: El Detonador, the detonator. Since that time, Tyrone had been considered the most dangerous man among the No Chingues gang. For this reason, he was chosen to protect La Preciosa.

  Presciencia stopped at the corner of Canal and Carondelet and bought a Times-Picayune. She tucked it under her arm and walked up the street and into the Palm-of-the-Hand Coffee Shop, where she took a seat at the counter. Tyrone entered right behind Precious and sat down in a booth by the door. On the table in the booth was a plastic sign that read, this table reserved for two or more customers only. A waitress came over and pointed to the sign.

  ‘Sorry, babe,’ she said to Tyrone. ‘Unless you expectin’ comp’ny, y’all’ll hafta sit at the counter.’

  Tyrone took out a grenade and set it down on the table. The waitress, who was about forty years old and had had the dubious privilege of serving the motley citizenry of New Orleans for the better part of two decades, clucked her tongue and sighed hard.

  ‘There’s necessarily exceptions to every rule,’ the waitress said. ‘What’ll it be?’

  At the counter, Precious ordered tea and lightly buttered rye toast and unfolded the newspaper. On the lower right of the front page she read a heading, astronomers to stop stars from twinkling. The dateline was Apache Point, New Mexico, and the dispatch wire was SNS, the Southern News Service. The prophetess knew that to believers, SNS stood for Satan Never Sleeps. It was through wire reports picked up by newspapers and magazines all over the world that the Satanists issued coded communiqués. She read the brief article.

  ‘A device originally constructed for antimissile defense may be utilized to eliminate the twinkling of stars, long the bedevilment of astronomers. Unlike conventional telescopes, which use stationary mirrors to collect and focus light from celestial objects, this instrument will be equipped with reflectors capable of being continuously deformed by electrically propelled actuators to compensate for distortions caused by twinkling.

  ‘The initial impetus behind such a design was to devise a means of sending laser weapon beams through the atmosphere without dissipat
ing their energy by superfluous reflection. Dr Alucard Norsk, who plans to install and test the instrument on a 3.5-meter-diameter telescope being built at Apache Point, N.M., said, “We will be able to observe dust storms on Mars, and analyze the structure of the outer atmospheres of brilliant starbodies. Most of all, we hope to develop adaptive optics as one of the most powerful tools astronomy has ever seen.”’

  Presciencia picked out key words in the article: eliminate devil deform distort devise weapon powerful tool. Her tea and toast arrived and she stopped reading. The quest to construct and to control doomsday machinery was never-ending, as was the struggle against Satan’s stalwarts, who were legion. Precious licked the butter off her toast. Evil came in all forms and from all sides, she knew, and now the devil’s darts flew faster than ever and from further away. La Preciosa closed her eyes and saw several sleek silver projectiles pierce a quivering lavender veil. She spread her legs slightly to facilitate the flow of her secretions, then bit into the hard bread.

  THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO D

  in the prison library, where he had worked for several months, Ice D had read in S. W. Harman’s book, Hell on the Border, about Rufus Buck, a black outlaw whose band of desperadoes terrorized Oklahoma and Arkansas during the middle part of the last decade of the nineteenth century. Buck and four members of his gang—Lewis and Lucky Davis, Sam Sampson, and Maoma July—were apprehended in August of 1895 and taken to Fort Smith, Arkansas, where they were formally charged with raping a white woman named Rosetta Hassan. Buck’s band had been hunted by a force of hundreds of men, including whites, Indians, and blacks. The outlaws’ trail of terror encompassed rape, residential burglary, horse theft, and highway robbery. Four women in all were violated sexually, one of them an Indian girl, who died. The white women survived and testified at the trial.

  Ice D, whose reading matter heretofore had been limited to comic books and karate magazines, had heard El-Majik refer in one of his speeches to the ‘frame-up’ and subsequent execution of Rufus Buck and his men as an unjust action by whites against blacks. When a copy of Hell on the Border fell to the floor from one of the library carts, Ice D picked it up and the name Rufus Buck caught his eye. According to the author, Buck’s crimes, D learned, had been perpetrated on persons of all races; when it came to victims, the man did not discriminate. The convict began to suspect that El-Majik was not above manipulating the facts of history for his own purposes.