Handling Sin

by Malone, Michael

  Still hearing no noise from the bedrooms, Sheffield took off his shoes. He looked at his feet for a while. It seemed to him that his second toes were getting longer. Finally, his Confederate cap on his head and his checked pants rolled as high as they would go up his enormous calves, he ambled for a long while zigzagging along the beach, where he found three only moderately broken shells, a horsecrab skeleton, and a barefoot woman with a bucket of seaweed. He trotted over to her and said, “Hi. Nice day.”

  “Not really,” she replied, frowning. And, in fact, she was right. The sky churned with gray clouds; the ocean churned with gray swells; even the sand was gray.

  “Well, it’s not too hot. That’s always nice. I’m Mingo Sheffield. I’m just visiting here with my neighbor, Raleigh Hayes. We’re in ‘Peace and Quiet.’ ” He pointed back at the cottage. “You collect seaweed?”

  “Not really.”

  “You know, they say if we’d all just eat seaweed, we could feed the whole entire world and knock out starvation for good. Does it taste funny?”

  “I suppose. Excuse me. Good-bye.” The woman turned her back and hurried away into the surf like a sandpiper.

  “Nice talking to you,” called Mingo, digging his toes in the cool sand. He walked slowly back to the corner of Surf Street, where he’d noticed a pay phone. He took a chance and called Vera. She hadn’t left yet for the Forbes Building to help Aura organize the new M.F.P. headquarters and she was very happy to hear from him, particularly as it was now clear that nobody had been murdered with his guns, and there was no reason for him to flee to South America or for her to have to keep telling lies. She was happy even though he had to confess that he’d sold her Pinto and then been robbed by Hell’s Angels. He had a great deal more to tell her, too, including his victory at Captain Nemo’s, including his decision to continue on this trip to rescue Earley Hayes, since Raleigh needed somebody to help him—as Captain’s Nemo’s had shown—and who but his friend should stick by him no matter what.

  Vera had things to tell him as well. Billy Knox had no idea who’d thrown the paint on his clothes, but he didn’t for a minute suspect Mingo, and, in fact, when she had gone in there to tell him that Mingo was so brokenhearted about getting fired that he’d seriously tried to kill himself, and was still so upset that he’d had to leave town for a rest cure, Billy Knox had himself gotten so upset that he’d promised to give Mingo an extra month’s severance pay on top of the two weeks already agreed upon—and to do so whether Mingo felt well enough to return to work during that time or not. Meanwhile, Pierce Jimson was buying the Knox-Bury building, because he was expanding his furniture business, and Billy thought maybe Mingo should talk to Pierce about a job there.

  Mingo didn’t think he’d like furniture as much as clothes. Besides, he had great hopes for a new business idea of Vera’s, which wouldn’t require much venture capital—or much space either, as it would be mostly a mail-order business—and now that Vera had found out how cheaply you could rent one of the smaller empty offices in the Forbes Building, maybe her brother-in-law would lend them enough to get going, even if they hadn’t quite paid him back what they’d borrowed a few years ago to start the door-to-door plant hanger company that hadn’t worked out too well. Cheerfully, the Sheffields talked on and on until Vera heard Barbara Kettell’s horn honk. She had only a second to share some other news: after Barbara Kettell’s release by the judge, Barbara had told Nemours she’d never step back inside his house unless he apologized for his behavior at the Woman Alive! show. So poor Barbara was sleeping in the baby’s room at her daughter’s, Mrs. Wayne Sparks’s. The Sheffields agreed that they were lucky, and kissed each other through the phones.

  Back at “Peace and Quiet,” Mingo found Raleigh, still wearing last night’s disheveled Hawaiian shirt, staring in disbelief at the opened telegram. “Hey, Raleigh, you’re up! That came for you, I just put it there on the table for you. I hope it’s nothing serious.”

  “Grrrrrh,” said Hayes.

  “So! What are we going to do today?”

  “I don’t believe this,” Hayes replied, now peering up at the kitchen clock. “Eleven o’clock. I never sleep till eleven o’clock. I’m a very early riser.”

  “Where’s Gates?”

  “Gates,” said Hayes sadly. “He went to make a phone call, and take care of some arrangements.”

  “He’s got a car? I didn’t see it.”

  “A motorcycle.”

  “Boy, I’d be too chicken to ride one of those. Is he coming with us on our trip?”

  “With us?” Hayes now shook himself. “Listen, Mingo. Gates has to go see his mother. She’s dying.”

  “Gosh. Poor thing.” Mingo sat down. “Boy, I sure know what that feels like.”

  Raleigh sighed. “But first, he has to run an errand for a friend, and I’ve agreed to go with him, and it now appears, I’m afraid, that this…” He sighed again. “…errand involves taking a boat out from Cape Fear late tonight and getting it to Myrtle Beach. So, Mingo, I have to ask you a favor.”

  “A boat on the ocean? At night? Gollee! What for? Are you crazy?”

  “Very possibly.” Raleigh reached for one of Mingo’s cigarettes on the kitchen table and lit it. “So I need you to drive the car to Myrtle Beach and get a motel, and we’ll meet you there.”

  “By myself?” “Would you prefer to accompany my brother on this boat, because, frankly—” Hayes broke off, his face ruptured by a loud fit of coughing.

  “Raleigh, you’re smoking!”

  Hayes smashed out the cigarette in his saucer. “Oh, for God’s sake. I don’t smoke. Are you going to do me this one little favor or not? All I’m asking you to do is drive the damn car you forced me to buy to Myrtle Beach.”

  “Then are we going to New Orleans?”

  Hayes stood. “I don’t know where we’re going! Isn’t that transparently clear?” Hayes began twisting the knobs on the sink faucets, which were dripping.

  “Come on, Raleigh. Don’t tease me,” smiled Mingo. “Where are we going?”

  Now Hayes had crawled under the sink and was banging at the pipes. “All right, Mingo. How’s this? We’re going to Myrtle Beach, then we’re taking Gates to Midway to see his dying mother, then we’re going to Charleston to give five thousand dollars to an old friend of my father’s, then we’re going to row to Cuba and bump off Castro, all right? I’m really in the CIA, Mingo, I wasn’t supposed to tell you. All right? Now I’ve got to do some work around here. This place is falling apart. Where are the car keys?”

  “You’re kidding about Castro.” Sheffield followed his fast-moving friend outside.

  Downtown at Bob’s Hardware, Mingo had an idea while Raleigh was ordering, with an enviable expertise, small items like washers, bolts, nuts, and putty, that he always seemed to know what to do with. Dropping the handyman back at “Peace and Quiet,” Mingo returned to town to search among the fishing tackle stands and the family surfand-turf restaurants for a clothing shop. Finally he found a musty department store so old-fashioned the pants were folded in stacks on dark wood shelves and the shirts didn’t even have plastic wrappers. The place had no style at all. The two mannequins in the window were just standing there side by side, like they had lockjaw; the woman, in a winter coat that was far too big for her, didn’t even have any shoes on, and the man’s Bermuda shorts hung down to his knees. Nevertheless, a sticker in the window announced the acceptance of all major credit cards.

  “Hi there, how you doing? What have you got in a forty-two long lightweight suit, blue or tan?” Sheffield asked the young pregnant woman who’d been watching him shake his head as he wandered the aisles. She wore her white-blond hair in dozens of tight tiny pigtails. Like the mannequins’ clothes, her maternity blouse was too large and out of fashion. He put down on the counter a pair of socks, a pair of bikini jockey shorts, a baby-blue-striped shirt, and a blue-dotted tie. “And congratulations!” he added. “I see you’re about to have a happy event. That’s wonderful.”
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  “Tell my folks that,” she sighed, and slowly sidled from behind the counter over to a small rack where she jerked aside a few dusty suits. “You sure you wear a forty-two?”

  “Me? Gollee, no, I wear a fifty-two. I’m buying this stuff for a friend. We’re on a trip to Charleston and New Orleans, and maybe even Cuba, and he forgot his suitcase, so I thought this would be a nice surprise, ’cause he’s been wearing my old muddy shirt for days. I know all his sizes because he’s bought all his clothes from me for ages and ages. I’m in Better Menswear.” He smiled, bobbing his moon face. “Well, I used to be.”

  The girl looked awhile at Sheffield but apparently decided that if insane, he was harmless, for she smiled back. “This is all we’ve got.” She held up a stark white, broad-lapeled polyester three-piece suit. “It’s half price.”

  “I guess so,” said Mingo. “This isn’t exactly my friend’s style. It kind of looks like a disco dancer.”

  “I don’t really work here anymore. I’m going to Atlanta soon as I get some money together.”

  “Is that where your husband is, Atlanta?”

  “Sort of.” She squished her lips together fretfully. “I just got to get out of here.” She looked around, as if for an escape route. “Oh, do you want this suit?”

  Mingo nodded, and found his Visa card. “Well, you’re lucky to be having a baby. Vera and I, she’s my wife, we tried for years, but God didn’t bless us. I mean, don’t get me wrong, He blessed us in lots of other ways.”

  Folding the white jacket, the girl all at once burst into tears. “Oh, dear! What’s wrong?”

  “Nu, nu, nothing.”

  Distressed, Sheffield stood there, patting her on the shoulder. After a few minutes, he said, “My name’s Mingo. What’s yours?”

  She took a long breath. “Diane. Listen, I’m sorry about this. Kind of lost it. Diane Yonge.”

  “Well, look here, Diane, I just got robbed by some Hell’s Angels, so all I’ve got left is fifty in my shoe. But I could lend you that, and I bet you could get the bus to Atlanta. Listen, okay, how’s that? I’d be glad to.”

  Diane looked up at the fat man’s wide bobbing face with the little Confederate cap above it. “Are you kidding?” She looked puzzled, then skeptical, then her lips twisted into bitterness. “Sure. I get it. And what do I have to do for you?”

  Mingo was struggling to bend down to untie his shoe. “For me? Well, maybe you could send me the money back if you get a chance. Here.” And he wrote his address down on the fifty-dollar bill. The young woman kept staring, first at him, then the money. Finally her mouth loosened into a smile. “Boy…” she began, “why are you so nice?”

  Sheffield grinned, rubbing his immense palms together. “Now! Diane! Let’s you and me have some fun, and take your mind off your troubles. You have any construction paper or some tissue paper and maybe some paint?”

  Startled back to cynicism, she shoved the shoppings bags at him. “I knew it. Okay, mister, you can just get out of here.”

  “Knew it? Hey, wait a minute. Wait a minute, Diane, I’m serious. Your display window’s got no style. Honest. It’s bad for business. Wait. I can help you fix it up. I’m not really all that busy today, and I guess maybe you’re not either, and this way you won’t have to sit around and miss your husband.”

  And so it was that when Gates Hayes bumped his motorcycle up the curb and parked it in front of Yonge Department Store, he saw in their window Mingo Sheffield crawling on his hands and knees beside a female mannequin who now lay reading a magazine in a bathing suit and jacket on a bright beach towel under a striped umbrella. Next to Mingo, a pretty pregnant girl was fitting a fishing cap on the head of a male mannequin, who stared, rod in hand, out over a blue tissue-paper sea. A sign in the yellow cloth sand said, “IN THE GOOD OLD SUMMERTIME!”

  “Definitely a nutjob,” said Gates, laughing, then strolled into the bank across the street, where he removed from his recently acquired safety deposit box the black leather shaving kit containing four thousand dollars in recently acquired cash. When he got back to his motorcycle, Sheffield was standing on the sidewalk hugging the girl. She waved at him as she closed the shop door.

  “Hey, Mingo! Hi. You move in fast,” grinned Gates and ran his thumb over his thin black mustache. “What’s your secret? Not a badlooking babe. Just a little knocked-up maybe. So, what you got in the bags? How ’bout a beer? Let’s go down the street, blow it off. Just don’t get in a fight, tear up the place. I hear you’re a killer! Okay?” He laughed.

  Mingo smiled shyly. People in Thermopylae rarely invited him to come have drinks; especially such wild, worldly people as Gates, who wore clothes like they did in New York magazines: in his crumpled silver pullover, full of zippers and pockets, he looked like a spacetraveling pirate.

  At the best table in the Blockade Runner, the two drank beer and ate boiled shrimp. “I was sorry to hear about your mother,” Mingo said. “Mine died two years ago in February and I guess I still can’t believe it.” He sighed.

  “Yeah.” Gates called for a waitress by pointing his forefinger at her and winking. “Yeah. She’s in the hospital. Just called her on the phone. Some chick at her house gave me the number. Big reconciliation scene. Boo hoo. Told her I was sorry I’d been such a pisser. ’Course, Mingo my friend, I want you to know I only laid eyes on this woman three or four times since I was a little kid, and she was soused half of those. She was not exactly gushing with maternal milk. I never could figure out why old Earley married Roxanne. Just ’cause he knocked her up, I guess. Boo hoo.”

  Sheffield was a little shocked by Gate’s tone, but he concluded that such tough talk was typical of the exotic convict adventurer type of person that Raleigh’s brother appeared to be. In the movies, these types always really did love their mothers.

  “Yeah, old Raleigh made me call her, so I charged it to his phone. But I did it. He was always making me do shit.” Gates shook his curls at the waitress, and zipped a few zippers on his sleeves back and forth as she took their order. “Good old do-the-right-thing Raleigh. Man, doesn’t it blow you away to see a tightwad like him driving that Cadillac! Man, it blew me away! I mean, he can afford it. The guy’s richer than Midas—you knew that, didn’t you? Got a bundle from his mother, and stuck it all in the bank and let it breed like rabbits ever since. I thought he wouldn’t touch it if his teeth fell out. Owns all these damn beach houses. I don’t see Roxanne leaving me a wad of family jewels, do you? All she left Earley when she skipped out, was me! What a pisser! What a world!” Gates kept laughing.

  Mingo felt he ought to explain. “I think Raleigh is maybe afraid your father might have married a teenaged Negro mental patient. I think.”

  “Aces!” Gates snorted. “Now that’ll be hard to top!”

  Mingo found Gates easy to talk to, or rather, to listen to, for all through their meal, the younger man held forth on one fascinating topic after another. He used different voices and different accents and it was just like being at the movies. He told of the noisy, gilt gambling casinos and long-legged showgirls of Las Vegas, and the famous nightclub singer with the terrible voice whom he had personally slept with in her dressing room.

  “Gollee!” said Mingo, his eyes round.

  He told of the still, steamy terror of jungles, and the pals he’d lost at war. He told of the cramped smelly cells and hard-muscled, hardminded convicts of the South Carolina prison, and the notorious old master criminal Simon “Weeper” Berg, whom he had personally bunked with. Weeper Berg, now seventy, who in his heyday had hobnobbed with the very popes and cardinals of organized crime, and had most recently almost gotten away with the highly publicized robbery of the Sheikh of Enbar’s Hilton Head lovenest.

  “I read about that!” said Mingo, his mouth round.

  Gates told of rooster fights in Mexico and dog races in Florida and poker marathons in Texas that he’d personally lost his shirt at. And cycles and cars and boats that he had personally driven faster than they’d ever bee
n driven before.

  “Gosh,” said Mingo. “You sure have done a lot of things. I’ve never really gone very many places. I mean, until now. I’ve mostly stayed in Thermopylae. In Better Menswear.”

  “Um hum,” Gates said, ordering more beer and more shrimp. “You’re stuck with who you are. Me, I’m a funny dude. I’m a flier, Mingo. I like to be in motion.”

  “I guess so! What do you do for a living, Gates?!”

  “Little of this, little of that. Have some beer. I see you wearing a Confederate cap. You interested in the War between the States?”

  “Oh, yes! I love it. I’ve seen Gone With the Wind about a hundred times, I guess. And I get the Time-Life book series, I’m up to volume seven. I love everything about the Civil War. I mean, except that people died.”

  “Me too,” smiled Gates and cracked the pink shell of his shrimp to dip it in horseradish. “Aren’t these good? While you’re here at Kure, hey, you ought to go look at Fort Fisher. Ever been there? No? You’d love it. Did you know, the heaviest land-sea battle of the whole Civil War took place right there? Really. Between January thirteenth and fifteenth, Yankee ships threw two million pounds of artillery at Fort Fisher. Two million!”

  “Wow! What happened?”

  “We surrendered,” Gates laughed. “More than the Vietnamese did, right?” He laughed some more, and Mingo joined in, delighted to be laughing with somebody, even if he didn’t quite catch the joke.

  “Boy, Gates, you sure know a lot about the Civil War.”

  “Well, in all modesty, Mingo, I used to be a bit of a scholar of that period, did a bit of work in archives, genealogical line, you know.” Gates’s voice, gestures, face, even his mustache (now drooping), had changed remarkably. He suddenly sounded like a dusty, preoccupied professor. “I imagine you’ve naturally had your family tree traced, know which ancestors fought for the South, what battles they distinguished themselves in, their acts of heroism, so forth?”