Southern Nights

by Barry Gifford

  ‘Ethiopians is black, right?’

  ‘Cassiopeia mostly was, I guess. Make Andromeda a quadroon, like my mama.’

  ‘What happen to her?’

  ‘Cassiopeia? Or my mama?’

  ‘No, Cassie, yeah.’

  ‘Oh, man, she be so mortify by the situation, trouble she cause, the word ‘‘melancholy” be invented just describe her. After she die, Cassiopeia was sent to the stars because of her beauty, be the brightest light in her own constellation. But the sea nymphs still got the red ass about her and force the gods place Cassiopeia up top of heaven, near the pole, make her be humble by bendin’ her neck.’

  ‘So what you mean by us bein’ sons of her?’

  ‘Lost sons. Mean we the kind of fools get too full of ourselves sometime, lose control. Look at us, man, where we are.’

  ‘You and me? Like in jail?’

  ‘Not like in jail. In jail! We ain’t paid nobody get here, have we?’

  Sailor stubbed out the end of his cigarette on the wall and dropped the butt back into the pack for hard-ups.

  ‘We just done what had to be done, Angel. What we had to do.’

  ‘And the man done what he had to do, too.’

  ‘You say your mama was what? Quadroon?’

  ‘Right. One-quarter black. ’Bout like most the population of south Louisiana.’

  ‘And your daddy, what was he?’

  ‘We don’t talk about him.’

  ‘Assumin’ he was white, what that make you?’

  Angel’s eyes turned red, blood spurted from the palms of his hands, and then he levitated, arms spread, feet together, floating until his back was flat against the ceiling of the cell. Sailor cringed on his bunk in disbelief, horrified, as he witnessed the blood dripping from Angel’s stigmata.

  A voice filled the cell, saying, ‘The Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels.’

  Sailor watched the blood stain the floor. He tried to speak, to ask Angel what was happening, beg him to come down, but his mouth and throat were paralyzed. Angel’s body began to spin, and Sailor collapsed, falling instantly into a deep sleep.

  When he awoke, Sailor saw Angel standing by the cell door, leaning against it, smoking a cigarette.

  Angel looked at him, held up the butt, and said, ‘Hope you don’t mind, man. Stole one of yours.’

  ‘Hey, what’s goin’ on?’ Sailor asked groggily. ‘I fell out, huh?’

  Angel nodded. ‘Yeah, all of a sudden, like you been hit with a hammer.’

  Sailor shook his head. ‘Had a crazy dream, man. You were in it, too.’

  ‘What was I doin’?’

  ‘Flyin’, man. You were flyin’ around the room, and there was blood everywhere.’

  Sailor looked down but there were no bloodstains.

  ‘Blood?’

  ‘Yeah, comin’ off your hands.’

  Angel laughed and stamped his right foot.

  ‘Hell, Sailor, that just sounds like Saturday night.’

  THE OTHER THING

  angel de la Cruz was taking his exercise in the main prison yard, lifting weights in the Pit with the crew of inmates who regularly worked out together. Oren Topo, a bespectacled, forty-six-year-old philatelist from Raleigh, who was doing a deuce-to-ten on an indecent exposure rap—revealing his private parts to a group of elementary school children during their morning recess—stumbled over a nearby barbell and fell on the ground directly in front of Angel as he released two hundred pounds of iron he had just clean and jerked. The portside weight bopped the top of Topo’s head, causing his cranium to explode. Bone, flesh, and bloody fluids splattered the Pit, most of it sticking to Angel.

  Edgar ‘One Big Dog’ Grissom, the prison doctor, whose gigantic right foot earned him his nickname, took one quick look at the toppled Topo, then threw an eye to the sky, and said, ‘Surprised as shit the mushroom cloud ain’t still hangin’ in the air.’

  The question of the perverted philatelist’s death being anything other than an accident was never raised; though there were those among the authorities who harbored a tiny thought about the possibility that Topo might have made an untoward suggestion to Angel to which the young man took exception. Nobody cared much about Topo, however; he had no family, and he was buried in the Pee Dee graveyard next to a former car thief from Rocky Mount named Tommy Dip. Dip had suffocated one night on his bunk when his cellmate, Igor Goose, stuffed six cotton socks down Dip’s esophagus. Igor Goose, who never gave an explanation for his actions, had then blinded himself with a toothbrush and been sent to the H. D. Stanton Institute for the criminally insane.

  Angel became severely depressed as a result of having caused Oren Topo’s demise, accidental though it had been. He refused food for several days before finally accepting a plate of rice and red beans brought to him in their cell by Sailor Ripley.

  ‘Good as hell to see you takin’ sustenance again,’ Sailor told Angel. ‘Hate to see you ruin yourself over one crushed queer.’

  ‘Man is captain of his own salvation,’ Angel mumbled between mouthfuls, ‘made perfect through sufferings.’

  Sailor nodded and said, ‘Uh-huh. Better that than the other thing.’

  Angel finished off the plate, set it aside, and leaned back on his bunk.

  ‘When I was a boy, I moved around a lot,’ he said. ‘Mostly to foster homes, and in between them the Jacob’s Ladder Repository for Waifs of Color in New Orleans. What family I knew about, such as my cousins the Purezas, was too poor to claim me.’

  ‘My old man was a hard drinker,’ said Sailor. ‘Bein’ home meant bein’ beat.’

  ‘Least you had a home. Best one I had was with a woman in the Bywater run a funeral parlor. Her name was Thelma Mars. I was ten and a half years old then, and she treated me good. Would have stayed with Thelma Mars forever, but she lost her business license when they found Speedy.’

  ‘Speedy?’

  ‘Yeah, Thelma Mars’s ex-husband. Somebody turned her in to the embalmers union and they discovered his corpse, which Thelma Mars had embalmed herself forty years before. She kept Speedy dressed in a tuxedo, propped up in her bedroom closet. Authorities come and took the body away and entombed him in St Louis Number Two.’

  ‘Did you know about, uh, Speedy?’

  ‘Oh, sure. Mrs Mars used to talk to him all the time. She liked me to sit in on the conversations sometimes.’

  ‘Conversations?’

  ‘Yeah. She did the talkin’ for ’em both, of course. I just listened.’

  ‘What would she—they—talk about?’

  ‘The usual stuff. World events, the weather.’ Angel laughed. ‘Old Speedy had some strong-ass opinions, as I recall.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Thought guaco vine was the cure for cancer. He instructed Thelma Mars to make a guaco leaf paste and put it on our toast in the mornings.’

  ‘What’s guaco?’ asked Sailor.

  ‘A tropical plant used as a remedy for snakebites. Speedy said if we ate guaco paste we wouldn’t get cancer, which is what killed him.’

  ‘How’d it taste?’

  Angel shook his head. ‘Can’t remember, even though we ate the stuff every day for the six months I lived at the Absolute Truth Funeral Parlor. When the people from Jacob’s Ladder come to take me back, Thelma Mars told me, “Do not mourn for Speedy. He is a dead person, and there is no need to keep on keeping on. You don’t cry over anything you have to give up, because you eventually must give up everything.” Words of wisdom.’

  ‘I guess so,’ said Sailor.

  Angel smiled and said, ‘Daddy, it’s the absolute truth.’

  KISS OF THE NASONIA VITRIPENNIS

  angel de la Cruz was alone when he made his break. He had timed it carefully, making certain that the guard who patrolled the area near the sewage flow-thru pipe had just checked the culvert into which the prison waste emptied before beginning his furious crawl toward freedom. Angel knew his chance of success was far greater were he to go
it solo, so he had not hinted of his plan to his cellmate, Sailor Ripley, or to any other inmate. Right now, as the population sat down for supper, there would be a minimum of latrine activity, and Angel seized the time, moving with alacrity.

  The escapee slid down the final section of pipe into a horrific fecal swamp, attempting as best he could to keep intake of breath to a minimum. Angel knew if he stopped at all he would likely be overcome by methane fumes, so the lone progeny of what Mother Bizco had identified as an Immaculate Receptacle, Sister Esquerita Reyna, now part of an order beyond, let his seemingly winged feet do the talking.

  He threw off his clothes on the riverbank and jumped into the water, desperate to rid his body of vileness. Angel swam downriver, ignoring the thick reptile presence he knew thrived in the writhing black moat. Moccasins kept their distance, however, repulsed by the demonic scent that Angel de la Cruz could never remove. At the third marker, he headed in, clambering up the muddy side into a tobacco field.

  The ungodly child of shade fled naked down a crop row, the evening sky simmering sienna and gold and silent. No birds disturbed Angel de la Cruz’s excruciating dash. When he saw the highway, he stopped and knelt next to the cancerous leaf, deciding in that instant to wait for nightfall before carrying out the remainder of his plan.

  At total, moonless dark, Angel moved forward toward the road. He stood by the side of the two-lane and listened for a rumble, which sound did not impress his tympanic membrane until two or more hours had passed. As soon as Angel spotted the twin lights, he stepped out into the center of the highway, waving his arms in semaphore fashion.

  The vehicle that bore down upon him was a late-model pickup truck of Japanese manufacture. It stopped before Angel and stood percolating in the still-intense heat left over from the too terribly long, infernal day. Baby’s son swiftly took to the passenger side, opened the door, and jumped up into the cab. The driver was a woman of late middle-age.

  ‘Evenin’, ma’am,’ said Angel. ‘Hot, ain’t it?’

  ‘What isn’t?’ the woman said, and drove on.

  After riding for a quarter of a mile in silence, Angel said, ‘I guess you’re wonderin’ why I don’t have any clothes on.’

  ‘Naked came the stranger.’

  ‘My name is Angel de la Cruz Reyna, and I’m on the run from the Pee Dee River Correctional Facility.’

  ‘Jewel Wasp,’ answered the driver, extending the extraordinarily long, bony fingers of her right hand toward him.

  Angel shook hands and, shocked at how cold hers was, quickly withdrew his own.

  ‘Know all about it,’ she said. ‘I was sent to retrieve you.’ Angel gripped the door handle and was about to bolt when the woman added, ‘Not by the law.’

  ‘Who by, then?’

  ‘Friends of your mother’s.’

  ‘My mother? She died when I was an infant.’

  ‘There’s death, and then there’s death.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Allow me to explain. A jewel wasp is unremarkable to the naked eye, but seen through a lens of some magnitude, it’s gorgeous. Its colors are iridescent and handle the light kaleidoscopically, reinventing angles. The female jewel wasp seeks out fly pupae and destroys them with her venom. She then deposits two-to four-dozen eggs in each puparium. The eggs hatch into larvae within two days and immediately commence devouring the feast provided by their mother.’

  ‘Why are you tellin’ me all this?’

  ‘Patience is a virtue, son. All too rare these days.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘A couple of weeks later, adult wasps emerge. The males, short-winged and incapable of flight, mate and expire in the patch of fly pupae in which they were born The newly emerged, winged females fly away the moment the mating act has ceased, in search of fresh fodder.’

  At this point Jewel Wasp clasped Angel’s penis in her right hand, holding it gently while she spoke.

  ‘The female jewel wasp’s great gift is her ability to control the sex of her offspring. After mating, she stores sperm in a singular organ, a spermatheca, which resembles a balloon. A thin tube is attached to one end, and attached to that tube is a muscle that either straightens out and allows sperm to pass to the egg, creating a daughter, or crimps the tube and blocks the sperm, allowing a son to be born.’

  Angel’s cock had hardened considerably, and he did not discourage Jewel from stroking him with her cool fingers.

  ‘The number of daughters produced depends on many factors, not least of which is whether she is the first wasp to lay eggs in that particular pupa. If she is, she’ll lay mostly daughters; if she is second, more sons are made. In extremely rare cases, only one son is allowed to be born.’

  ‘I still don’t get it,’ said Angel, finding it difficult, now that his cock was fully erect, to keep from squirming as the Wasp woman manipulated him.

  Jewel pulled the truck to the side of the road and cut the engine. She released Angel’s penis, pulled off her trousers, and in one extremely swift motion mounted him.

  ‘You are living evidence of the exception to the rule,’ she said.

  Jewel Wasp proceeded to take the overwhelmed man, inflicting stinging bites to his neck and head as she rapidly brought him to orgasm, extricating his seminal fluid seemingly without even the pretense of pleasure on her part. Upon completion of the act, Angel de la Cruz rested his head against the back of the seat and closed his eyes. Without dismounting, Jewel reached down under the seat with her right hand and came up with a Colt Python, the nose of which she pressed to Angel’s lips.

  ‘But the female reserves the right to revoke the life she granted,’ Wasp rasped.

  Angel opened his eyes and his mouth at the same time, and Jewel jammed the barrel tip past his broken front teeth and partway down his throat before pinching the trigger.

  PIT STOP

  jewel wasp pulled her white Toyota half-ton into the rest area off I-55 near McComb, Mississippi, parked it, and got out. She stretched her five-foot-seven-inch, 140-pound body, shook it as would a wet dog who had bounded onto the porch after having been caught by a cloudburst. It was late afternoon of a cloudy day in mid-August, muggy and hot as it gets in the Magnolia State. She located the ladies’ restroom and strode toward it, turning bill-backwards the teal Marlins ballcap she wore while driving to shade her pale green eyes. There were no other travelers visible, and a battered, blue two-year-old Thunderbird was the only vehicle beside Jewel’s in the lot.

  Jewel entered a stall, lowered her pants, positioned herself strategically over the toilet, and squatted slightly, urinating without sitting down. After that she rinsed her hands, face, and neck at a washstand. When she looked into the mirror above the basin she saw reflected in it two faces other than her own. Jewel did not immediately turn around, instead waiting for one or both of the men to speak before deciding on a plan of action.

  ‘Heigh-ho, lady,’ said the skinnier and obviously older of the two. ‘Feelin’ better now, are we?’

  His high-pitched, screechy voice brought to Jewel Wasp’s mind the sound of aluminum furniture being dragged across a patio.

  ‘You fellas lost?’ she answered, still watching them in the mirror.

  The skinny one whinnied, grinned, and said, ‘Not at all. Looks like we’re in the right place at exactly the right time. Don’t you think, Parshal?’

  The other man nodded, did not crack a smile, remained mum.

  ‘Figure you got a fish, huh?’ said Jewel.

  Skinny stopped smiling, curled what would have been his upper lip had he had one, and said, ‘’Bout to reel and deal, darlin’. You want it like that? In the butt? Watch both our cheeks twitch?’

  The talker moved toward her, coming within a few inches before unbuckling and dropping his pants. He reached his long, thin, heavily veined arms around Jewel Wasp’s waist, undid her trousers, and pushed them down.

  ‘Well, well. Lady after my own heart, don’t wear no panties.’

  Jewel fel
t the man’s semierect penis push at her anus. The man grunted and bumped but his sex organ failed to fire sufficiently. No matter how furiously he rubbed and rocked, he could not summon an erection capable of penetrating her. The more he tried, the less responsive was his apparatus. Jewel did not make a move of her own volition.

  ‘Shit!’ he howled, and ripped the baseball hat from her head. ‘Damn!’

  ‘Come on, C. J.,’ said the other man. ‘Let her be. It ain’t gonna work, you know it’

  C. J. kept pumping, but by now his penis was so limp that it just flapped against Jewel’s buttocks. He stopped and stood there, panting hard.

  ‘You do her then, Parshal,’ he said. ‘I’ll hold her down, it’s necessary.’

  ‘C. J., let’s go. This is sick.’

  C. J. backed away from Jewel and hauled up his pants. He composed himself, brushed back his sparse red hair with both hands, held his nostrils dosed one at a time, and blew snot on the floor from each.

  ‘You’re too old, lady,’ said C. J. ‘That’s the problem. I’m go find myself a dainty young thing make my dick thick as a brick. No need to keep your sorry ass dean. Ancient! You’re ancient, bitch! You hear me?’

  The men left the restroom. Jewel stood in the same position, her hands gripping the sides of the washbasin. She heard glass breaking, then the roar of an automobile engine followed by the squeal of rubber on pavement Slowly she relaxed her hands, flexed her fingers, then lifted and fastened her khakis. Jewel turned and searched the floor for her cap, which she located crown-up under the hand drier. She picked it up, put it on in the conventional manner, and walked outside.

  The men—or, more likely, just the one called C. J.—had busted out the front windshield of her truck. Jewel opened the driver’s-side door, reached under the seat, and came up with her revolver. She walked back into the restroom and went over to the mirror in which the men’s faces had appeared. Jewel lifted the Python, pointed it at the glass, and fired twice.

  ‘Be vigilant,’ Jewel Wasp said aloud, ‘because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom she may devour.’