A Savage Wisdom

by Norman German

  Annie thought for a moment. “Everyone?”

  “Everyone,” he said.

  “Even you?”

  Nevers glanced up at her. “Even you.”

  After gigging their fourth flounder, he pumped the lantern’s piston and the mantles flared more brightly. Then Nevers had Annie retrieve a pack of Luckies from his shirt pocket and light one. He looked at the stars.

  “Scorpio,” he said, pointing.

  “Where?”

  Nevers stepped behind her. He took a drag on the cigarette and flicked off the ash.

  “Watch.” Using the glowing tip, he traced the pattern of the constellation. “There’s his claws. And these two stars form his back. And here’s his tail.” The red cone slid down the tail and made a quick loop.

  “Yes,” Annie said. “I see it!” She made little jumps like a child. Nevers stepped around to her front.

  “Want a pull?” Harold put the cigarette to her lips. The cone brightened as she drew the smoke into her lungs.

  As they slowly waded, Nevers hummed his favorite spiritual, “Rock of Ages.” The melancholy tune made Annie sad. Finally, she spoke to break the lonely mood the melody had evoked in her.

  “You believe that about everybody having two sides?”

  “Absolutely,” Nevers said. “You think you know yourself?” He lifted the lantern to her face, then resumed scanning the bottom. He took Annie’s silence to mean that she thought she did. “You dream a lot?”

  “Some.”

  “All right,” Nevers said. “Let’s say you dream about your mother and . . . someone else.”

  “I had a dream about Djurgis the other night. He was pulling a dish out of the oven, but instead of spaghetti, it was a mop on the plate.” Annie laughed.

  “In the dream,” Nevers said, “did you know what he was going to say before he said it?”

  Annie thought for a moment. “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, you should know,” Nevers said. “After all, the whole thing’s coming out of your head, right? Djurgis wasn’t really there, and you composed the dream, like a play, so you have to be the one giving him his words.”

  Annie frowned. “That’s right,” she said.

  “So you don’t really know yourself,” Nevers concluded.

  They walked quietly for a while. Annie was both amused and mildly disturbed by what Nevers had said. She was trying to think of another dream when something powerful and swift slid from beneath her foot. She let out a squeal, then a hysterical laugh as she realized she had stepped on a flounder they had not seen.

  The two followed the shoreline as it curved south toward the ocean. They gigged several flounder and came to a cut flowing from a marsh.

  “Too deep to walk across,” Harold said. He examined the stars. “Better head back. They’ll be waiting for us.”

  Nevers turned a knob on the lantern, and the mantles changed from white to yellow. The two began the trek back. Annie looked at the stars, then the ocean, then the slope of beach as it climbed to a grassy terrain. It occurred to her that she had no idea where she was and a small fear pressed on her chest. She looked at Harold in the feeble light and saw him as the man who had brought her so far in just a few months. Yet there he was, walking along as if nothing unusual had happened. With his right trouser leg above his knee and the left unrolled almost to his ankle, he looked like an ordinary man doing something the lower classes enjoyed. But she knew there was nothing ordinary about this man, not his name or his chest or his back, and certainly not his thoughts. And she knew him. It made her feel special and safe.

  Nevers paused to light a cigarette. Annie’s thoughts wandered back and forth over the time she had spent in New Orleans, thinking of what he had taught her and of his many oddities. His tattoos. His mysterious business dealings. The people he knew, high and low. Huey Long. Wendel. Shoeshine boys and men who flew airplanes. Strange objects he collected. Putting ketchup on his eggs. He didn’t drink.

  “Why don’t you drink?” Annie asked. “You never told me why.”

  “I did,” Harold said calmly. Annie looked at him. She could tell he loved where he was and what he was doing, like there was nowhere else he’d rather be. But he always seemed like that, no matter where he was. The world was like a big playground to him, she thought.

  “I know. You said you like having your wits about you, but you never drink. I haven’t met anybody in New Orleans who never drinks. At least, not yet.”

  Harold walked along as if she had said nothing. He finished his cigarette and flicked the butt into the ocean.

  “You may not believe this.” He looked at her. “But I knew Huey Long.”

  Annie’s heart bolted. She wondered if he knew she had seen the photograph.

  “I wasn’t involved in politics, but I ran with some of the people around Long. Gambled with them. Sometimes I won a lot. Other times I’d lose a little. All in all, I made enough jack to keep me in fine clothes, and that was important. These were powerful men and they had big businesses. When they needed someone, they’d give me a call. I was beginning to think I was really something. Drinking, smoking cigars. So I gambled a little, drank a little, worked a little. Gambled some more, drank some more, worked less, drank more—you get the picture.”

  Annie nodded.

  “I started drinking all the time, beer mostly, then booze—but expensive stuff, not hooch. I looked pretty rough sometimes, but I always fixed up for a card game. This one night, I was drinking pretty heavy at a poker game. On the way from the restroom, I overheard a man called

  Skinny Tompkins say, ‘I’ll clean that drunken sumbitch out if he ever comes back.’ This was a guy I thought was my friend. Gave me work several times. Good work. I decided I’d show him who he was dealing with and sat down intending to bust him. I lost a couple of small pots, then won a big one and let myself get cornered into a bluff. Instead of folding like a sane—and sober—person, I kept throwing chips down. On the last round of bets, I tossed in everything I had. Skinny turned up three eights and a pair of aces. I shoved my cards into the deck without showing. Trying to salvage some pride, I pushed my chair back and stood up too quickly. I tripped on the chair and fell to the floor on all fours. I was mad and sick. And embarrassed. It was all I could do to keep from throwing up before I reached the front door.”

  Annie said, “So you went home and . . .”

  “Drank some more.” Nevers chuckled. “And the more I drank, the more I realized I was just a young punk trying to run with the wolves. The next morning I woke up lying in my own vomit. I looked in the mirror and didn’t know whoever that was staring out at me. I got in the bathtub with all my clothes on and cursed myself. ‘You spongy sot, lousy sousing son-of-a-bitching boozehound.’ On and on like that for God knows how long.” Harold looked at Annie. “Get the picture?”

  She nodded.

  “I decided right there I’d never touch another drop. Course, I was sick for a week. If you dance, you gotta pay the band. To top it off, I didn’t have a penny to my name. Well, I had that one penny I told you about, the one I keep in my shoe?”

  Annie nodded, remembering the X-ray at Marks-Isaacs.

  “When I came out of it, I was mad as hell. Mad at myself for getting that way, and mad at Skinny Tompkins and those other leeches that sucked Huey Long’s blood. I laid low for a week to get my strength back and plot my revenge. One afternoon, I rang up Skinny to ask if a game was going down that weekend. I slurred my voice a bit and he was friendly as could be, a wolf slobbering over easy prey. The whole evening, I drank tea out of an Old Forester bottle and acted drunker and drunker. I won a few medium pots and took a couple of small losses. Finally I drew the hand I’d been waiting for—Oh, I forgot to tell you. Arkie floated me a couple hundred bucks to get in the game. Anyway, I drew . . . what was it? Three kings, I remember that. And I believe it was a pair of sevens or nines. I was playing sloppy, like an overconfident drunk will do. I threw chips all over the table. I could see it in thei
r eyes. They thought they were going to shear me till I bled. Come time to show, three of them were still in and there must have been two thousand dollars on the table. I raked the hoard of chips toward me and said in the crispest voice they ever heard, ‘Gentlemen, I believe I’ll call it a night.’” Nevers burst out laughing. “That’s when I went into business for myself. Nothing like being flat broke to make a man feel like an entrepreneur.”

  At the bungalow, the couples compared their hauls. Nevers and Annie had twelve flounder. Burk and Nausica boasted over fifteen flounder and a redfish. After Nausica and Annie had visited the outhouse with a lantern, everyone gathered for photographs.

  Annie saw the light in Burk’s cabin wink out sometime after three o’clock. She was on top of Nevers, her hand on his mouth in an attempt to keep the other couple from hearing his words. Half an hour later, they too were asleep and didn’t awaken until mid-morning.

  Eddie Agnelly was due to arrive at three that afternoon, so the vacationers ate lunch and fished for an hour, releasing their catch after bragging about their skill in landing the fish.

  On his first pass, Agnelly flew over and dipped a wing at the four as they waited by the make-shift landing strip on a stretch of beach with hard, packed sand. The pilot circled and approached from the east, heading into a southwest wind. Annie watched the plane drop for the landing. It seemed to point seaward, even though it glided straight along the runway. Just before its wheels touched down, Agnelly gunned the engine. The plane straightened. Its tires ricocheted off the wet sand, then rolled along the beach spewing grit.

  After the men loaded the gear, and the girls had boarded, Nevers and Burk turned the plane around by its tail, then climbed in. Agnelly taxied down the narrow strip and in a skillful maneuver spun the plane around into the wind at the end of the runway. In a minute, they were airborne. In an hour, they were at Jimmy Wedell’s flying field west of City Park.

  * * *

  At ten that evening, Annie and Harold were making love in The Cave. There were times when the two embraced tenderly, lovingly. At other times, Nevers took her ferociously and was done in less than a minute. Her lion or her lamb, Annie liked it both ways.

  She could hear Nevers in the bathroom, whistling “Rock of Ages.” As usual, the subdued light had exposed their endeavors. Annie imagined watching the two of them from across the room. A tired arousal moved inside her breast and then yielded to her desire for a cigarette just as Nevers eclipsed the doorway.

  A towel around his waist, he said, “Going downstairs. Back in a sec.”

  Annie reached for the pack of Luckies. The cigarette between her lips, she struck the last match. Damp from the trip, it fizzled.

  She opened the drawer of the nightstand to search for another box. Scrabbling around, she noticed that the photographs were gone. She moved a watch on a fob, a single cufflink, a letter opener with a fish handle, then hit something heavy and cold. She removed the envelope obstructing her view and saw a small revolver with H&R embossed on its black grip. Annie opened the yellowed envelope and peered inside. It held a single-column newspaper clipping. “Nilson Boy Misses Pass, Keeps Going.” She tilted the strip toward the light.

  At Saturday afternoon’s game in T. R. Williams Memorial Stadium, local boy Harry Nilson, distraught over a pass he missed on a crucial play, ran out of the stadium and has not been seen since.

  His parents are offering a $100 reward for information regarding his exact whereabouts.

  Young Nilson, a senior second­-stringer, was called for duty when star running back Rex “Streak” Fordham injured his ankle in the fourth quarter.

  Nilson’s number was called for an end-zone pass, which he seemed to have snared, then fumbled. He exited the stadium as the whistle signaled the end of the contest.

  The Diablos lost the game 7 to 6.

  Not until the final paragraph did Annie realize that the article was about Harold Nevers. The low-grade depression she had been feeling for weeks welled up inside her. A series of thoughts fell into place very fast. A strangled sound came from her throat. Harold Nevers was not an orphan, and he had never been a sports star. He had been an ordinary boy crushed by a silly game.

  The man whose bed she shared, who was he? Annie looked at the doorway leading to the stairwell and spoke her real name for the first time in four months.

  “My name is Toni Jo Henry. I grew up in DeRidder, Louisiana. I’m twenty years old.”

  Harold Nevers, or Harry Nilson, had lied to her. Several times. She was angry, worried. Intrigued. How could she confront the man who had done so much for her, given her a job and money and an interesting life?—the man who even now was coming up the stairs to lie in bed with her.

  Chapter 11

  October 1938

  Annie tried to lose herself in work. In the evenings, she dressed up and took a streetcar to the shopping district on Canal Street. Occasionally, she ran into Bliss or Nausica and visited with them briefly. They always seemed to be having a good time, a great time, in fact, and always with a different man. She wondered how they could do it.

  Nevers came into town as he always did, without warning, like a tornado. Each time after he had gone, Annie felt like a survivor surveying the devastation. This time, Nevers took her to the 500 Club. Men Annie had seen many times, and a few she had never seen, slapped Harold on the back as if they had known him all their lives. Some kept their eyes on Annie as they talked to Nevers. Once, a hefty man tiptoed to raise his head above the crowd and yelled at Nevers, “J.P.! Over here!” The man waved his arm. Harold grabbed Annie’s arm and ducked into the crowd.

  “This way,” he said. “That’s somebody I don’t want to see.”

  “Why’s he calling you J.P.?”

  “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you sometime.”

  They walked out the back door into a cool drizzle. Shoppers were huddled under awnings to wait out the rain. Nevers pushed his way through the crowd. At the corner of Dauphine and Canal, Wendel called from their feet.

  “Wet night!” he said from beneath a battered umbrella. “That you, Miss Annie?” She smiled at the outcast, who hugged a wine bottle to his chest. “Say,” he said. “I saw a pretty picture of you the other day.”

  “Oh? Did Harold show it to you?”

  Annie looked up at Nevers just in time to see his face darken with rage. Stepping forward swiftly, he kicked the derelict viciously in the chest and knocked him off his board. The grimacing man lay on his side, clutching his stomach with one hand and reaching for the rolling bottle with the other. He emitted a strained groan, then a forced laugh.

  “I probably deserved that one,” he said. “Now, if you’ll just turn me rightside up, Cap’n, I’ll be getting out of your way.”

  “Harold,” Annie said in a pleading voice.

  “Come on,” he said, grabbing her roughly. Stepping around the fallen man, he pulled Annie down the walk as she gazed over her shoulder sympathetically.

  * * *

  When Annie awoke the next morning, Harold’s car was gone. After a light breakfast, she walked around downstairs, meddling with the endlessly fascinating curios. Upstairs, there were two or three closed rooms she had not explored. She climbed the stairs and tested the door next to The Cave. It was locked. Across the hall, she put her hand on a bulky varnished-iron doorknob and turned. Dim light filtered through the curtains. Chairs, couches, and chests covered with spider webs populated the room, which smelled of dust and cedar and mothballs. She closed the door, making sure the bolt shot securely into the strike plate. At the end of the hall was a narrow door, a closet, she guessed.

  She turned the faceted-glass knob. It was jammed. She gripped the knob firmly with both hands and twisted. The bolt popped from its home, and the door sprung open. On the multi-tiered shelves lining the small room sat basins, shallow boxes, and large dark bottles. Annie pushed the light switch. A deep red glow suffused the cubicle. Although she had never seen one, she immediately recognized the closet as a makeshift
darkroom.

  Above her head, Annie noticed a short-order wheel like the one in the Time-Out Cafe. She pulled a ticket from its clip. It was in Harold’s style but written in an unreadable shorthand or code. Only the numbers were clear: 10, 25, 15, 10. Annie peered behind the door. Several shallow boxes were stacked up to the doorknob. She gripped the top three and stepped into the hall. She lifted the lid of the top box.

  Annie immediately recognized the woman in the photo as Bliss. She was wearing tights and a bodysuit and sported a peacock tail similar to the one in the burlesque Nevers had taken her to.

  Annie thumbed through a number of sheets and found Nausica looking at her. She was squeezed into a low-cut bodice, the nipple of her left breast half exposed.

  Annie opened the second box. A young woman in ordinary clothes struck a suggestive pose in a secluded bower.

  Toni Jo Henry wouldn’t do anything like that, she reasoned, not in a million years, so the woman in the picture must have been Annie Beatrice. Both of the women inside her seemed to split apart, then come back together. Spilling the sheets across the floor, she fell to her knees with an anguished cry and wept uncontrollably into her hands.

  When she came to herself, Annie gathered the sheets from the floor. The box contained photographs of Annie in four poses. The copies of each set numbered 10, 25, 15, and 10. While returning the pictures to their box, Annie caught a glimpse of her reflection in the windowpane. In tear-­matted disarray around her swollen eyes was the lank, yellowish hair of a dead woman.

  * * *

  When Annie returned that afternoon, Harold’s car was parked on the street. She burst into the den.