A Savage Wisdom

by Norman German

  “Right,” he said, hanging the coat. “They give away a bat with every three-piece suit you buy.”

  Annie looked at the bats spilling from the closet like a logjam.

  “How many suits you have in there?”

  “I’m not sure,” Nevers said, nudging the bats into the closet with his foot, “but I’ve got about twice as many suits as bats.”

  “Really?” She was impressed. “Why’s that?”

  “Well,” he said, still herding the bats into the closet. “There’s always a coupla two or three boys hanging around the front of Beekman’s.” Nevers gave the bats a shove and shut the door quickly. “I’ve given about half of them away.” He looked at Annie, his palms out pleadingly, and shrugged his shoulders. “I mean, how can you resist the looks those poor kids give you when you come out the store?”

  She walked to him with a smile. Grabbing both ends of the towel around his neck, she pulled his face down to hers and kissed him.

  “You’re such a sweet man. I didn’t know they made lions as sweet as you.”

  “Me, I’m a kitty-cat,” Harold said. He bared his perfect teeth. “Don’t let the fangs fool you.”

  Annie kissed him fully, then walked him backwards to the lamp. In the mirror, she saw herself holding him. She reached under the shade and turned the switch.

  “Meow,” she said, pulling him onto the bed. Harold removed Annie’s blouse and camisole. She helped him off with his shirt and undershirt. Nevers got up and headed for the bathroom.

  “I have to see you,” he said. “I thought angels glowed in the dark.”

  He pulled the copper-beaded string under the wall fixture. A slice of light cut across the room. Annie looked at his silhouette in the doorway. Playing her part in the dance, she stood up and released her skirt and slip. He walked towards her and pushed her lightly. She fell back onto the bed and closed her eyes. She could hear him unfastening his belt and sliding his pants off.

  Afraid and excited as his weight turned her towards him, Annie glanced up. She closed her eyes again. She knew men grew larger when they were ready, but she had never seen a man completely undressed. She even knew they came in several sizes. “Small, medium, and too big,” she had heard the ruder girls joke. She wondered if this was too big.

  Nevers kissed her and touched her, making her ready. She kept her eyes closed, embarrassed that he could see her naked. He rolled on top of her and moved himself against her. She opened her eyes and looked up at him.

  “Shouldn’t we . . . do something? Before?”

  He rolled off of her and blocked the light.

  “That’s—. How can I put this,” he said. “At the Roosevelt tonight. Did you see anyone wearing earplugs?”

  “Why, no,” Annie said, trying to look at his face, but it was like trying to look at the dark side of the moon. “Were there people wearing earplugs?”

  “Now, why would they do that? They’re there to listen to the music. You wouldn’t want to watch a fireworks display with sunglasses on, would you?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Same thing here. Wearing one of those would be like stopping up your ears in the Blue Room. You’d miss half the pleasure.”

  Annie nodded doubtfully.

  “It’ll be all right,” Harold assured her. “I’ll be careful.”

  Nevers kissed and touched her again. Annie closed her eyes. Even though she wanted him and had imagined this moment for a long time, it was difficult. The sharp pain competed with her pleasure. Annie realized finally she’d have to forgo the pleasure and work through the pain toward a future enjoyment.

  When it was over, Nevers went to the bathroom. Annie opened her eyes. In the dim light spraying from beneath the door, she saw dark spots on the sheet. They were larger than she had expected. Her heart drummed with fear. Then her embarrassment at the stains welled into tears. She wondered what to say when Harold returned. Maybe he would speak first and set her at ease. He would know what to say. He was a kind, good man who gave baseball bats to poor little boys.

  * * *

  A noise woke Annie in the dark. She reached beside her. Harold was not there. There was no light under the bathroom door. She stretched. A stinging pain reminded her they had made love. Shadows of leaves fluttered on the ceiling. Twisting towards the window, she saw the dark outline of a tree. Nevers had lowered the top sash of the double-hung window. The gently swaying branches lulled her to sleep.

  It was late morning when Annie awoke. The closed windows on the two walls were covered with foil against the sunlight. She knew Harold stayed out most of the night and slept till noon. The foil was his way of creating his own night.

  Tiny beams of light leaking from a few holes in the foil allowed Annie to see Nevers beside her. A sheet covered all but his left foot, which dangled over the edge of the bed. Annie had never seen him asleep. Hoping he would not awaken, she gazed at his face, its composure reminding her of a baby’s slumber. She wondered when he had come in and why she hadn’t stirred. Had he stepped out to run one of his mysterious errands, or merely gone to the kitchen for a glass of water? Soon she grew tired of lying in bed without someone to talk with.

  Carefully, she reached over to Harold and pinched his nostrils shut. After a few seconds, his mouth opened with a gasping intake of air. Annie burst into laughter. Nevers smiled lazily and rolled towards her, the sheet moving enough to expose the top of his chest, where she saw a tattoo of flowing golden hair atop a pink forehead. Annie reached for the sheet. Nevers stopped her hand before she could unveil the rest of the tattoo.

  “I want to see,” Annie said.

  Rubbing his thumb and forefinger together, Harold said, “How much?”

  “To see a tattoo? That’ll be the day. I’ll just wait till you’re sleeping and take a peek.” She tugged on the sheet and Nevers let it slip from his hand.

  It was an angel. Its yellow tresses waved across a light pink forehead and fell about its shoulders. From there, a powder-blue robe of many folds cascaded down Harold’s chest, growing fainter in color and detail until it disappeared into normal skin where the angel’s feet should have been. The lifelike angel was precisely done, but what struck Annie most were its mahogany-brown eyes, which gazed at the viewer with a serene, otherworldly stare.

  “When did you get this?” Annie touched the angel’s hair and slid her fingers down to the crimson sash around its waist.

  “A few years ago, from Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”

  “Right,” Annie said sarcastically. “You expect me to swallow that one?”

  “Well, sort of.” Nevers smiled. “I got it courtesy of a starving WPA artist.”

  “They pay those guys to make tattoos?”

  “Indirectly. I saw this guy painting a mural inside the Royal Street police station, a pony-express scene. I told him I liked it, and he said he was glad to get the work, but post office walls weren’t his true calling. ‘That so?’ I said. ‘What is?’ ‘Human flesh,’ he said. ‘Best canvas in the world.’ Well, one thing led to another and by the next week I was sitting in a back room of the post office, no lie, feeling like a pin cushion.”

  “The angel,” Annie said. “Is it male or female?”

  Harold’s mouth turned down as he looked at his chest.

  “Good question. I don’t think angels ‘do it.’” Annie giggled. “So I guess they look like a doll between their legs.” She laughed. “You know, kind of smooth and hairless.”

  Annie smacked Nevers on the chest.

  “Hey! You can’t hit an angel. What kind of a person are you?”

  They bantered for a while, describing tattoos they had seen. Nevers told her about Omi, a muscular man with thick, black lines tattooed from his head to his feet in the Borneo style. He traveled around the country exhibiting his body at circuses and county fairs.

  “His whole body was covered? That’s taking it a bit too far, if you ask me. What would his mother think?”

  “She’s the one gave him the tat
too,” Nevers replied.

  “Liar,” Annie said. She thrashed him so good he had to fall out of bed to escape her playful wrath. Annie tumbled after him, and he finally agreed to fix breakfast if she would spare his life.

  While Nevers puttered around downstairs, Annie bathed and dressed.

  Entering the kitchen, she said, “Not done yet? I’m starved.”

  Nevers pointed a two-pronged fork at her.

  “I had to take a time-out for First Aid because of you, so don’t complain.”

  Annie gasped. “Did I really hurt you?”

  “It’s not me you hurt.” He unbuttoned his shirt to reveal the angel’s face. “Look at this.” Annie stepped closer for a better view. With a fountain pen, Nevers had given the angel two black eyes. Annie burst out laughing at the absurdity. “Angel killer,” Harold accused. Annie drew closer to embrace him. He raised the fork in defense. “Back!” Nevers stabbed at her.

  “Don’t!” she squealed. “You might slip and really cut me.”

  “Back!” he said, approaching with the fork. “Into the den. Entertain yourself while—.” He glanced at the skillet. “Cripes, you’re making me burn the bacon.” He ran her out the door and into the den. “Now stay here till I call you.”

  In the sunlit room, the first item that drew Annie’s attention was a triangular cabinet wedged into a corner. She noticed several shelves of small fossils and other unidentifiable curios. Beside a delicate quartz arrowhead with ornamental notches was something that resembled a stone jellyfish. In the midst of red, blue, and green crystals lay an amorphous, glassy grey object, a petrified plant of some sort, she guessed. On a shelf by itself sat a bony mass shaped like a frog with molars covering its back.

  After puzzling over the objects, Annie looked around the room. On a coffee table lay several picture magazines, mostly Life and Look, and an annual called U. S. Camera, a collection of distinguished photographs from 1937. Annie flipped around in the book, then turned to survey the rest of the room.

  Covering most of one wall was a painting of working men with exaggerated muscles, a black locomotive in the background. Against the opposite wall stood a weighty Zenith console radio whose facade resembled a church organ. Over it hung a number of silver dollars in a glass case.

  Harold broke into her reverie. “Breakfast is served!”

  Walking into the kitchen, Annie said, “After we eat, you’ll have to tell me all about those curious thingies in the den. They’re very interesting.”

  * * *

  After breakfast under a mimosa swag on his sunporch, Nevers led Annie into the den. Pointing as if she were afraid it would leap at her, Annie asked, “What’s this froggy thing here?”

  “That,” Harold said, “is commonly known as a froggy thing, but it’s actually a fish. Well, it’s not the whole fish. And it’s not really a fish.”

  “Now I’m confused.”

  “It’s a skull.” Annie’s eyebrows lifted. “The skull of a devilfish. That’s another name for a manta ray. They’re like big stingrays. I mean big.” Nevers extended his arms. “This one had a wingspan of over ten feet. When you hook one, they leap out of the water like they could fly away.”

  “You caught this thing?”

  “About five miles off the coast of Grand Isle.” Harold turned it over again. “See these things that look like teeth?” Annie nodded. “Those are teeth.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “And see these things that look like horns?”

  “Those are horns.”

  “Wrong. Those are what his muscles attach to. Sort of like this little knot on your shoulder.” Nevers touched the bony process that kept the strap of Annie’s sundress from slipping off her shoulder. “Interesting, huh?”

  “Scary,” Annie said. “I’m almost afraid to ask what that is.” She pointed to the glassy grey object on the middle shelf.

  “That’s luck,” Nevers said.

  “Oh, so that’s what it looks like.” As she caught on to Harold’s humor, Annie’s personality was becoming like his.

  Outside, they heard footsteps and glanced toward the door in time to see a shadow approaching. The creaking sound of the metal box announced the morning mail.

  “More luck?” Annie said.

  “Could be.”

  “What kind of luck is this?” She picked up the glassy stem.

  Careful,” Nevers said as he returned the skull to its frog-like stance. “If you live a hundred years, you’ll never see another one of those.”

  “Let me guess,” Annie said. “It’s a petrified seahorse.”

  “Rarer than that. Although I confess I’ve never seen a petrified seahorse. This is a fulgurite. It’s what you get when lightning strikes sand.”

  Annie inspected the object in her palm. “It heats it up and glassifies it, right?”

  “Precisely. I found it while gigging on Pontchartrain Beach. I’ll take you sometime. You wade in the water at night and spear flounder hidden in the sand.”

  “Right. Knowing my luck I’ll spear one of those devilfish and it would carry me into the Gulf on its back.”

  The mailbox creaked again.

  Annie said, “Harold Nevers, you’re the luckiest man in the world.”

  Nevers turned toward the door. “Mailman probably found a letter he didn’t deliver.” He took the fulgurite from Annie and replaced it on the shelf. “These might be more to your liking.” He stepped to the silver dollars set in purple felt bordered by a black frame.

  “This is easy,” Annie said. “Those are silver dollars.”

  Nevers held up a finger. “But not just any silver dollars. These were minted in New Orleans and they’re uncirculated. Can you find which one’s missing?”

  After a minute, Annie said, “This one. There should be one here.” Skipping 1893, the middle row ran from 1889 to 1894.

  “Right. It’s the rarest silver dollar struck in New Orleans. That one I’ve got with some others over here.” Nevers walked to a rolltop desk and pulled open a drawer.

  “Look at this one first.” He handed Annie a coin enclosed in a plastic envelope. “It’s an 1880 with the second 8 stamped on top of a 7.”

  Annie examined it with a magnifying glass Harold had given her.

  “Oh, I see it,” she said. “Is it valuable?”

  “Not really. Just interesting.” Next, Harold showed her an 1882 with the 0 mint mark stamped over an S, then a 1900-0 with the 0 over a CC.

  “For Carson City, right?” Annie said. “Boy, this is easy to see. That 0 really messed up the Cs.”

  “Look at Liberty’s cheek. See those scuff marks?” Annie noticed the minuscule abrasions. “Those are called bag marks. Even though the coins haven’t been in circulation, they’ve rubbed against other coins in the canvas bags they’re shipped to banks in. Now,” Harold said. “Look at this one.” He held a scrap of green velvet in his hand. He lifted a corner to reveal the coin. “This,” he said, “is the rarest of the New Orleans mint marks. It’s the 1893-0 that’s missing from the wall display.”

  Annie looked at the coin in Nevers’ hand. It had a deep mirror-like finish free of any flaw, even bag marks.

  “How much did you pay for it?”

  Nevers laughed. “That’s how much it cost—not how much it’s worth. There’s a difference. Its cost can be measured, like four or five hundred dollars, or a million. But something’s worth is intangible.”

  Annie scanned the shelf of curios.

  “Which one do you like most?”

  “The fulgurite. It’s the luckiest find I ever made. It didn’t cost me a thing, but I wouldn’t take a thousand dollars for it.” He looked at the coin resting in the velvet. “This cost me something. I won’t say how much. Partly, I paid for its rarity, and partly for its beauty. But scarcity. What’s that? You look at this coin and it looks pretty much like any other silver dollar. But its beauty. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  He turned the coin over carefully on the cloth. An
nie observed something in his eyes she had never seen. He was clearly inspired by its beauty.

  “If you could only have one, the fulgurite thing or the silver dollar, which would you choose?”

  Nevers chuckled. “For a beautiful girl, you sure ask hard questions.”

  He studied the matter for a while. Scrutinizing the coin, his face slowly changed, all mirth finally draining from it. He frowned at Annie.

  “If I ever have to make that decision—.” His eyes dropped to the silver dollar. “I’ll make it.”

  His reaction made Annie feel like it could actually happen one day.

  Chapter 9

  August 1938

  Nevers was away on business for two weeks. The free time allowed Annie to catch up on her diary entries and write her mother. It was ironic, she thought, that her life was so much more interesting than her mother’s, yet her mother wrote her five long letters for every one she returned. It made Annie feel strange, too, to read “Dear Toni Jo,” like she was two people or couldn’t make up her mind which she wanted to be.

  Her mother’s version of Toni Jo was supposed to be interested in who had a baby in DeRidder or that her cousin Lou Ann’s cow finally dropped a calf, putting the two scraps of news in the same paragraph as if they were of equal importance. While writing her mother, Annie pretended to care that Mr. Jamison’s dog Rustler, who liked to sleep in the road, finally met his end, when what she wanted to say was that it was a miracle he lived as long as he did without getting run over by a car.

  When Harold was in town, it seemed Annie was always getting ready or following him around New Orleans. She slept little, smoked a lot, and ignored the finer details of restaurant management. His departure was almost a relief.

  It didn’t take long for the local hobos to discover that the woman running Terra Incognita was an easy touch. Transients also solicited restaurants for leftover rolls and piecrusts, or private homes at the back door for sandwiches. They knocked politely and, hat in hand, offered their labor in exchange for food. Proud men out of work through no fault of their own, they rarely accepted free handouts. They all had some skill a resident or proprietor could make use of.