‘Y’all look like a bird, darlin’, a bright-colored bird flyin’ the coop. Is you?’
Baby looked at the person who had spoken, a woman seated to Baby’s left. She was about forty, Baby guessed; a good-looking, sepia-skinned lady. The woman was wearing a black half Stetson hat with a pearl-headed stickpin in the brim.
‘’Scuse me?’ said Baby.
‘Nothin’ worth excusin’, honey,’ the woman said, and laughed hoarsely. ‘Just wondered if you was needin’ comp’ny. Happens I prefer it.’
‘My name’s Esquerita Reyna, but ever’body call me Baby.’
The woman extended her right hand, three fingers of which were adorned by multicolored stone rings, and replied, ‘Hello, Baby, I’m Claudette Crooks, but everyone knows me as Sugar.’
Baby shook hands, then jumped in her seat.
‘Don’t tell me you Sugargirl Crooks?! The singer? One who done “Melt Me to the Bone” and “Dude Don’t Get Much Rest When He Be Sleepin’ Around”?’
‘That was me, all right. Days gone by.’
‘You were my favorite singer when I was at Turhan Bey Junior High School on Tonti Street! Can’t believe it’s you!’
‘Yass, girl, it’s me. Now a ol’ lady waitin’ on the bus.’
‘Shit, Sugar, you ain’ ol’! Why, you one of the all-time greats!’
Sugar smiled and took Baby’s hands in hers.
‘Thank you, Baby, you make me feel good. Truth is, I been all through with that mess a long time. Only singin’ I do now is at church. Where you headed, child?’
‘Corinth, North Carolina, see my aunt. Get away from New Orleans awhile.’
‘Ain’t that good! We practic’ly neighbors, bein’ I’m bound for Asheville, few miles down the road.’
‘You live there or here?’
‘I quit city life soon after I quit the recordin’ business. Been in New Orleans to attend the funeral of one of my cousins, CeCe Dobard, died of breast cancer, Lord have mercy.’
‘Sorry to hear that.’
‘Uh-huh. CeCe was a sweet gal. Only forty-two, a year older’n me. The Lord callin’ us in no particular order, it look like. A woman need to be ready.’
‘Why you quit makin’ records, Sugar? I never could get enough of you as it was.’
‘Bless you, Baby, fo’ sayin’ that. It’s a old, tired story been told too many times. Jus’ say a man in the middle of it.’
‘Tore you down, huh?’
‘Sister, the minute a woman allow a man take responsibility for her life, she fixin’ to let him ruin it.’
The boarding call for the East Coast bus came over the loudspeaker and Sugargirl Crooks rose abruptly to her feet.
‘Come on, Baby,’ she said, ‘we need to get us a seat together close by the toilet. My kidneys don’t take kindly to the road.’
UNTAMED
sailor ripley pressed his right foot against the accelerator pedal of the ochre 1958 Buick Limited he’d just bought while holding his left foot down on the brake pedal until the acrid odor of aggravated rubber singed his nostrils, then expertly lifted off the brake precisely as his right big toe hit metal, laying a fifteen-foot strip of Firestone’s finest in front of Alabama Billy Caldwell’s Car and Major Appliance Lot. Sailor tore out Fayette Street and swung a hard right onto Hatteras Boulevard, headed for Federal Highway. He had turned eighteen years old the day before and today had paid three hundred dollars cash money for the machine of his dreams.
For two months, Sailor had begged Billy Caldwell not to sell the Banana Monster, as Sailor’s sixteen-year-old girlfriend, Lula Pace Fortune, called it, to anybody but him. Sailor promised Billy he would have the three hundred in hand by the first of May; he had, and now the car was his. Robbing Chigger’s Chicken Cottage in Bolivia had not been on the original agenda, of course, hut Sailor couldn’t count on Caldwell’s keeping the Buick after the first, so Chigger’s became fair game. Sailor did not consider himself an habitual criminal. Penny-ante stickups, he reasoned, could not be classified as heavy-duty crimes any more than copping a blow job from a strange girl could be considered cheating on your girlfriend. ‘Blow jobs ain’t sex,’ his daddy used to say. ‘It’s just a little somethin’ brighten up the day.’ Sailor had no trouble putting stickups in the same category.
When he pulled up in front of Bay St Clement High School, Lula was waiting for him. She shrieked when she saw the yellow Limited, threw her books into the backseat through the open passenger-side window, and climbed in.
‘Sailor,’ Lula cried, her long black ponytail flipping as she swiveled her head, inspecting the vehicle, ‘this short is the most!’
He grinned, took an unfiltered Camel from behind his left ear, put it between his lips, deftly manipulated a match with his right hand without removing it from the matchbook, and lit the cigarette.
Sailor expelled a blue ribbon of smoke and said, ‘Hoped to please you, peanut. Purpose of my life, in fact.’
Lula threw her arms around Sailor’s neck and squeezed him to her, pressing her practically brand-new breasts against his black cotton Fruit of the Loom T-shirt.
‘Oh, Sail,’ she sighed, ‘no matter what my mama says, you’re the one, you know?’
Lula stroked the brilliantined-back wing of blue-black hair on the left side of Sailor’s head with her right hand.
‘I know,’ he said.
‘I mean not only in the entire state of North Carolina, but in the whole civilized world.’
Sailor laughed and tossed the Camel out the window.
‘How ’bout the uncivilized part?’
‘Need to know more about it before reachin’ a conclusion,’ Lula said, and giggled. ‘So far, though, you’re the most uncivilized person I’ve ever had anythin’ of a serious-type nature to do with.’
‘You figure I’m uncivilized, huh?’
She reared back her head and looked at him.
‘I guess untamed is more like what I’m gettin’ at. Yeah, Sailor, y’all definitely are the untamed type.’
He clutched her slender but sturdy body to his, kissed her gently on the mouth, and said, ‘You fixin’ to tame me, then, Lula? Make me do right by you?’
‘Hell, baby,’ said Lula, gently raking the fingernails of her right hand across his chest, ‘the more wrong you do with me, the more right it feels.’
Lula kissed Sailor as deeply as she could, and suddenly felt her entire body become liquid. Students walking by the car peeked in and laughed and made sordid comments but neither Sailor nor Lula paid them any mind.
‘No matter what, Lula,’ Sailor said, looking into her deep gray eyes, ‘no matter what happens ever anywhere, we got it perfect right this very untamed moment. No way nothin’ or nobody can ruin it. Not even Mrs Marietta Fortune.’
‘Sailor Ripley, you’re the most romantic boy? I may be only sixteen years old but that don’t mean I don’t know just how lucky I am.’
‘Tell you, Lula, I ain’t the smartest person on the planet, but I got a feelin’ this kinda luck don’t never run out.’
TRUE BELIEVERS
‘what say we go on a run this weekend, Lula?’ Sailor said, as he and his sweetheart cruised in the Limited along the Cape Fear Turnpike.
Sailor kept the Buick at an even fifty. All four windows were down, allowing the fragrant early May air to circulate inside the car.
‘This is some kinda dreamy ride, Sail,’ said Lula, ‘you know? Just breezin’ like this?’ She closed her eyes.
Sailor shook loose a Camel from a pack on the dash, stuck it between his lips, and punched in the lighter.
‘Ever’thin’ works,’ he said.
Ten seconds later, the lighter popped up and Sailor pulled it out and lit his cigarette. He replaced the lighter with his right hand, which he then inserted between Lula’s thighs.
‘Feelin’ naughty, huh?’ she said, spreading her legs a bit.
‘You bet, darlin’. What you think about what I said? We can be almost anywhere in a couple hours.’
‘Gray an’ yella go good together, don’t they, Sail?’
‘Sure, peanut. Why you ask?’
‘Color my eyes an’ color the car. Really suits me.’
Sailor took the Camel out of his mouth with his left hand, flicked the ash out the window, stuck the cigarette back on his lower lip and grabbed the steering wheel. The fingers of his right hand remained mashed between Lula’s legs.
‘Perfec’ Friday afternoon like this,’ he said, ‘ought to be we’re goin’ somewhere special.’
‘Like New Orleans,’ said Lula. ‘I been waitin’ to go back there since I was eleven an’ visited the city with my mama and daddy. We stayed in a big hotel had the most gigantic ceilin’ fans I ever seen in the dinin’ room. I recall our havin’ to walk past about thirty tattoo parlors, though, to get to the river. Never have seen so many tattooed men in my life. Mama said they’s mostly gone now, the city bein’ cleaned up, which is too bad, I think. Trashy parts of a city is always the most interestin’ parts.’
‘Take us a couple days to get there, honey. No way I could get you back for school on Monday.’
‘Oh, I know, Sailor. I just been thinkin’ ’bout N.O. lately.’
‘We’ll go there someday, Lula, I promise. Meantime, what say we head for Corinth, that little town in the mountains I told you about? Your mama ain’t gonna be back ’til Sunday night, right? We get home before then.’
‘Yeah. She an’ Auntie Dal drove to Charlotte this mornin’ to see my daddy’s ol’ friend and business associate Mr Santos, man who paid for Daddy’s funeral.’
‘He the one send flowers to your house all the time?’
‘To Mama, every Thursday. Think he been sweet on her since before she married Daddy.’
‘So, we goin’ to the mountains?’
‘Mama be callin’ the house, see I’m there.’
‘She get back, tell her you was stayin’ with a girlfriend.’
‘Guess I could call Patsy Strangelove, have her back me up I tell Mama I been at her house. Her daddy’s dead, too, and her mama ain’t hardly ever around, wouldn’t know if I been there or not.’
‘Sure, peanut. You call Patsy soon as we get to Corinth. I know a cool place we can stay at just outside town, called the South China Sea Motel.’
‘Funny name for a motel in the mountains of North Carolina.’
‘Guy who owns it used to be in the navy. Been ever’where, ’cludin’ China, I guess.’
‘How you know this place, Sailor? You take other girls there?’
Lula opened her eyes and pushed his hand away.
Sailor laughed and said, ‘No, darlin’, I just heard about it, is all. Buddy of mine named Taylor Head goes up once a month or so, stays at the South China Sea.’
‘What for?’
‘Keeps his collection of Kim Novak photos there. Mostly ones of her in Picnic and The Man with the Golden Arm. Has maybe a hundred of ’em.’
‘Why? An’ why’s he keep ’em there?’
‘Likes Kim Novak, I guess. Way she looked in them old movies. Don’t really know why he stores ’em at the motel, ’cept maybe for safekeepin’. Could be Taylor’ll be there this weekend and you can check out the photos yourself.’
‘Can think of better things to do, baby,’ Lula said as she took Sailor’s right hand and replaced it between her legs.
He grinned and kicked the Buick past sixty. To be eighteen years old zooming along in a terrific car with an almost perfect girlfriend who can’t hardly get enough of you on a breezy spring afternoon in the South was just about it, thought Sailor Ripley. Whatever lay ahead, he allowed, might turn up something even better, but this was enough for now, and he was glad as hell he had the good sense to realize it.
‘Sail?’
‘Uh-huh?’
‘Gotta be somethin’ not entirely unweird ’bout a boy keep all them pictures of a old actress like that.’
‘Peanut, might be it’s all he got, you know?’
‘Mean, he ain’t so lucky as us.’
‘Not by half, honey. Might could be nobody is.’
Lula closed her eyes again and listened to the wind in her ears.
‘Young and innocent as I am,’ she said, ‘I do believe I know the truth when I hear it.’
At seventy-five miles per hour, the Buick began to shimmy.
TIGHT FIT
‘when the world is zoomin’ by, like out the window of this bus,’ Sugargirl said to Baby, who sat to Sugar’s right, next to the aisle, ‘could be we’re watchin’ time pass. Mean, it won’t never be the same, completely the same. Not so long as the Lord keep pushin’ the way he do.’
‘Pushin’?’
‘Yeah. Ain’t you noticed how he don’t let nothin’ or nobody be more’n seconds at a time? Not even seconds, really, you think about it.’
‘Prob’ly why there ain’t any lastin’ peace ’til a body die,’ said Baby Cat-Face, ‘an’ even then, worms is on it.’
‘The body bein’ picked at but the soul be free.’
The bus was about twenty-five minutes outside of Corinth, North Carolina, when a very large, pear-shaped, tan-faced woman wearing a ratty yellow wig walked up the aisle from where she had been sitting in the rear to the front of the bus and stood next to the driver. Cradled across her heavy bosom was an AK-47 assault rifle.
‘Word up!’ the woman announced. ‘I ain’ jokin’ an’ I don’ be dopin’. My name is Daylight DuRapeau. My mama say she name me Daylight ’cause she had a feelin’ the world was gonna see a whole lotta me. And as y’all can positively witness, there be considerable of me to see.
‘I speck mos’ y’all gon’ be disappointed to learn we makin’ a detour here, the driver don’ mind. An’ he don’t. Not while I holdin’ an automatic instrument the only point to ownin’ is causin’ all kinds calamity an’ destruction. Up ahead here, driver, we gon’ come to a turn-off for the one ninety-one highway. You know it?’
‘Uh-huh,’ said the driver, not taking his eyes off the road.
‘Good,’ Daylight said. ‘You follow that along the French Broad River ’bout sixteen miles to Tight Fit, town wedged in between the river and side of a mountain. I let you know what to do nex’ we get there.’
‘This world get more uncertain by the hour,’ Sugargirl said.
‘Should never lef,’ said Baby.
‘Truly folks,’ said Daylight DuRapeau, ‘don’t mean to make y’all nervous. Fack, this might could turn out to be an entire enjoyable experience fo’ all us involve, volunteer or not.’
‘Somethin’ ’specially strange ’bout dis woman,’ whispered Baby. ‘Look in her eyes what my man Jimbo call like a deer in da headlight.’
Sugargirl Crooks closed her eyes and prayed silently. Baby Cat-Face sat stone-still, feeling nothing except for the twin trickles of perspiration emanating from her armpits.
‘Oh let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end,’ said Sugar, ‘but establish the just; for the righteous God trieth our hearts.’
THE BIG KISS
‘sail on, sail on, my little honeybee, sail on,’ Muddy Waters sang. Sailor and Lula danced close, inching across the worn brown carpet in room six of the South China Sea Motel, lights off with the radio loud enough to cover up truck noises from the highway.
‘Peanut,’ Sailor Ripley whispered, ‘my dick is thick as a brick.’
Lula laughed and held her man tight. ‘I know, darlin’,’ she said, ‘it’s cuttin’ into my belly like a butcher knife. Just let’s dance some more, though, before we go to doin’ it, okay? I’m feelin’ real dreamy right at the minute.’
‘Sure, baby,’ said Sailor. ‘I won’t have no trouble keepin’ the thought.’
There was a loud thump against the west wall of Sailor and Lula’s room, as if someone had thrown a chair against it. Sailor and Lula stopped dancing and waited for voices, but they heard none. They gripped each other again and had just pushed together when another thump exploded against the wall.
‘
What you think, Sail?’
‘Guess I better go See.’
‘Careful, darlin’.’
‘You bet, peanut. Stay inside.’
Sailor opened the door to their room, poked out his head, and looked around. Except for up on the highway, nothing was moving. He stepped outside, walked down to room five, and put his left ear to the door. Just as he did, another loud sound issued from the interior. Sailor knocked hard.
‘Y’all all right in there?’ he shouted.
There was no answer, so Sailor knocked again.
‘Y’all need some help?’
The door opened, revealing a very short Hispanic man about thirty years old. Long, black, uncombed hair fell over his face; he wore a dirty white T-shirt, stained brown trousers, no shoes or socks. He needed a shave but had no mustache. His black eyes were glazed over; he looked stunned, as if he had just been hit in the head.
‘What?’ said the man. ‘What you’re sayin’?’
‘We heard them loud sounds, thumps on the wall. We got the room next door. Thought maybe there was some kinda trouble.’
‘No, no troubles. I was asleeping.’
‘Think maybe you mighta been kickin’ the wall in your sleep, then.’
‘Si, si. Sometimes I have big sueños, very powerful.’
‘Sueños. Them’s dreams, right?’
‘Dreams, si. Sorry I am disturbin’ you.’
The man held out his right hand.
‘Me llamo Pepe Pescuezo. From Murgatroyd, Tejas.’
Sailor shook hands with him.
‘Sailor Ripley, from Bay St Clement, North Carolina. You a long ways from Texas, Señor Pescuezo.’
‘This a holy place, man. Ain’t that why you here? You with your wife?’
Southern Nights Page 23