Handling Sin

by Malone, Michael

  “He’s a worrier? And what do you mean you don’t have seventyfive dollars? You had more than four hundred that you cheated out of poor Mrs. Wetherell’s guests.”

  “They were having fun. And ‘poor Mrs. Wetherell’? The babe’s got twelve mink coats, living damn near in a tropical zone, and one of them’s plaid. A cool dozen, count them!”

  “I hope she did, after you left.”

  “Wow, that hurts. And here when I’ve got this nice surprise for you.” Gates took his brother’s arm and led him around to the other side of the truck. Big gold-glittered letters spelled out across the glistening red side, “THE KNICK-KNACK GEM-CRACK HIGHTIME CIRCUS.”

  “TA DA!”

  Hayes nodded. “Well, it is a surprise.…But I don’t get the point. If you’re planning to trade this truck in, or give it to Mrs. Parisi, or whatever you think you’re going to do, what’s the point in painting it red and writing this circus nonsense on the side?”

  “For fun!” Gates, to Raleigh’s shock, stood on his hands. Then on one hand. Then flipped back upright, tossing the black curls from his eyes. “Oh shit, man, don’t tell me you really don’t remember? Daddy’s circus? Every summer? Family reunion? Forbes Park? Hey, come on, Raleigh!” Gates grabbed his brother’s head in both hands and shook it. “Think back. Damn, that’s the very first memory of my whole fucking life and it slipped your mind? Lovie in her clown suit? Old Roxanne the coochie dancer? Uncle Bassie and His Famous Dancing Dog, Alexander the Mutt?” Gates laughed. “Remember Daddy drunk on the tightrope a foot off the ground? You don’t remember any of that? I mean, I know you didn’t exactly join in with a big gung ho, but a couple of times I’m sure you played your trumpet for the Grand Finale. ‘Now presenting, in the center ring, every blessed member of the Hayes Family we could corner, in the Grand Finale of the Great, Unique, Never Before and Never Again Till Next July KNICK-KNACK GEM-CRACK HIGH-TIME CIRCUS. Ta da’?” Gates looked at his brother with an odd sweet smile. “Hey? Raleigh?”

  “Yes,” Hayes said. “I remember.”

  “Whew!” Gates tapped him on the chin. “Auld lang syne. Family reunion. All that jazz. Now, let’s roll. I’ve got a duel to fight! Off to the field of gauntlets flung. Foggy mist. Muffled cloaks.” He lunged suddenly into a fencing position and twirled an imaginary foil. “ ’Tis for thee, fair Lulu Belle, loved I not honor more or less.” Forward he pranced, shouting, “Ha! Aha! Lay on, signore, and be pissed with thee!”

  “Gates, Gates,” sighed Hayes, and he thought of his daughter Holly’s response to his demand that she be nicer to Caroline: “How’d you like to be her twin for the rest of your life?” “Gates, how in the world can we be brothers?”

  “Beats me,” grinned the naked swashbuckler.

  “Would you mind telling me, one, why you don’t have any clothes on?”

  “Hey! My threads are hand-tailored, man, I don’t work in them. I work in them, if you know what I mean. My life’s a mess, but my clothes are clean! Speaking of sameo, Big Bro, where’d you pick up the pinstripe? Not bad. Little too Wall Street maybe, but not bad. ’Course, I really liked you in that white number Mingo got you in Kure Beach. It made a statement, you know. ‘Stud coming.’ ”

  Hayes ignored this. “Two. What did happen to that four hundred dollars?”

  Gates slapped the side of the truck cab. “You think Toots gave me these parts? Paint? Tires? Well, he practically did. I got a new carburetor in here. You didn’t see this babe before, Raleigh, up on ole Fred’s blocks. She was Turd City, no kidding.”

  “Yes. And wasn’t this vehicle left to Sara Zane, not to you? Do you think it was fair, talking her into giving it up?”

  “Yeah, well, skip it. I can’t handle talking about Sara. I’m a flier, Raleigh. Can you see me waltzing down the aisle with a kindergarten teacher?”

  “No, frankly.” Raleigh was about to begin the lecture “The Costs of Irresponsibility,” when his brother changed the subject with news that pushed Sara Zane’s financial problems out of his head. Gates changed the subject because (as Raleigh didn’t know, but the reader may recall) he had recently possessed more than four hundred dollars; ten times more. He had brought to Midway in his shaving kit $4,000 in cash, money he’d received for making not his first, as Raleigh thought, but his fourth, pickup run to Smith’s Island in the motor launch “Easy Living.” This money he had vaguely planned to use to buy time from his numerous creditors. Instead, he had given every penny of it to Sara Zane, so she could give every penny of it to Roxanne’s hospital, pharmacy, and funeral home. In exchange, Gates had accepted Fred’s old truck, which Miss Zane had been ready to sell for $500 to an importune junkman who’d told her it was useless except for a few spare parts. There were many reasons why Gates did not want to tell his older brother that he’d given Sara $4,000 and the least important was that he didn’t want Raleigh to ask him where he’d gotten the money in the first place. The fact is, he didn’t want Raleigh to think he cared about Sara Zane, or, for that matter, about Roxanne, or, for that matter, that he could feel any strings at all tugging him earthward. The fact is, he was embarrassed that what he’d done might be construed as a good deed, and he certainly didn’t want anybody to know he’d committed one of those. He was, as he confessed to Mingo Sheffield, a funny dude. So he changed the subject. “By the way, this Toots Kingstree guy’s coming along with us to New Orleans.”

  “What?!”

  “He’s fixed it with his buddy Wade back there to herd his livestock. Okay by you? I mean, this is your show, Raleigh. I’m along for the ride. Myself, I don’t mind. Nice old guy. Plenty of room under the big top.” He banged the truck’s side.

  “What? Kingstree’s coming? Why?”

  “Got me.” Gates shrugged. “Weird guy. Seems to think you’re going to get him a contract with RCA Victor or something. Look, hell, he’ll pay his own way. More than I can do. Sorry, Raleigh. Lucky you’re loaded.”

  “I am not loaded, I assure you!” Hayes crossed his arms tightly.

  “Hey, don’t con a conner. Remember, I’ve been in your pockets. Fatsville. Okay, as my big brother would say, it’s 11:12:45 in the post meridian. Haul ass.”

  And it was 12:03:19A.M. by the time the group had dressed (Berg reappearing in a fedora and a suit of bold checks), by the time they had hooked up the ramp so Gates could drive the white Cadillac up into the belly of the circus truck, by the time Raleigh, like a dyspeptic Jonah, had crawled inside to lash down the car with chains. Even with a Cadillac, a motorcycle, a ramp, a trunk, a bass fiddle, Toutant Kingstree’s bundles (for the saxophonist seemed to anticipate a long stay in the city he called the Land of Dreams), even with Mingo’s souvenirs and Mingo himself, the space inside the truck’s trailer was immense. There was room for the mattress, canvas chair, battery lights, plastic water jug, quarts of whiskey, and twenty ham sandwiches Kingstree was donating in exchange for his passage. There were all the comforts of home; even a small window up near the cab, for air and for yelling at Gates to slow down.

  “Mr. Kingstree,” said Raleigh, as the tall black man shoved a giant cardboard box into the truck. “Are you sure it’s wise for you to just get up and go like this? I mean, to leave your business so precipitously?”

  Kingstree sucked on his lips hard. “I’m in the music business. Mr. Hayes. Fifty years. It’s time I took my chance. I’m ready.” He was dressed for travel in a suit of black and blue vertical stripes, a black satin shirt and three gold chains.

  “Well, I’m a little worried. A man your age taking off—”

  “My age? I’m sixty-four. You were talking to Jubal, weren’t you? He’s three, four years older than me, maybe more. Doesn’t look it, but it’s so. Listen, I won’t let you down. When you got the talent, age just smooths it out.”

  Hayes gave a last look out over the junk-crowded yard where the young pianist stood waving farewell to Kingstree. “You didn’t happen to see Rogers today, did you? He didn’t come by here asking for me?”

  Kingst
ree pulled the metal doors closed with a clang. “I keep telling you, man, you don’t need Jubal. I’m the one you need.”

  Maybe, thought Hayes, facetiously, as the truck lurched forward, maybe Toutant Kingstree was right. Of course, he’d never really expected Rogers to show up to join, ha ha, the circus. Maybe it had been so long since his father had laid eyes on Jubal Rogers, maybe, ha ha, Raleigh could palm the saxophonist off on Earley Hayes as the lost clarinet player from Thermopylae. “Mama, why did you ever leave Philadelphia?” sighed our hero, as he opened his greatgrandmother’s trunk and saw the Virgin Mary smiling at him. “Very funny,” he told the Mother of God, and slammed down the lid.

  Chapter 26

  In Which Our Hero Enters Atlanta with More Passengers Than He Expected THE SHINY RED KNICK-KNACK GEM-CRACK HIGH-TIME CIRCUS stopped outside St. George because Mingo had forgotten to go to the bathroom before they left Charleston. Stopped outside Midway so Gates could call Sara. “At one-thirty in the morning,” said Berg. “I should feel so concupiscent again before I croak.” Stopped in Montmorenci because Berg’s bowels were letting go. Stopped on the outskirts of Augusta because it was discovered that Toutant Kingstree had sneaked a baby pig into the truck in a cardboard box—a runt that the sow wouldn’t suckle—and it had to be walked. “Pigs are smarter than dogs and cleaner than cats,” he promised the other passengers. “Pet her. Her name’s Peaches.”

  “Thanks but no thanks.” Simon Berg pushed away the squirmy pink rooting nose. “I am not complaisant with pigs. Hereditarily. Keep it in the box. Awgh. Let me sleep, will yah? I’m a lousy senior citizen. My guts can’t take this pace.”

  So Berg wrapped himself in blankets on the mattress, and Mingo took his place in the cab. Mingo, in tribute to Burt Reynolds, had always yearned for a chance, if not to take the wheel of a big semi (which Gates, remembering how the fat man had backed the U-Haul over the incline at Reverend Joey Vachel’s marathon revival, vetoed), then at least to sit in the buddy seat, where—if the truck had only been equipped with a CB radio—he could have listened in for warnings of smokies ahead. So, happily up in the cab, beside the urn of Roxanne’s ashes, Mingo smoked and chewed gum while he described to Gates the splendors of the Ambrose Inn (the cut flowers on the dresser, the mints on the pillow, the wine bottle in the mini-bar). “Gates, I just wish you and Weeper could have stayed there and met Gregory; instead of Weeper wandering around and losing my Myrtle Beach bear like he did.”

  “Bet you the pissers don’t take Jews,” said Gates, bouncing behind the giant steering wheel, a beer between the legs of soft tawny leather pants that perfectly matched his high boots and wideshouldered jacket.

  “That’s not true!” Mingo protested. “Gregory’s mother is Jewish. She goes to the synagogue. It’s the oldest nonstop synagogue in the whole country, right there in Charleston. And, anyhow, Gregory’s not prejudiced. Two of his best friends are lesbianic.”

  “From what you tell me, doesn’t sound like ole Greg’s exactly Mr. Macho himself.” Gates downshifted and roared around three cars and a Greyhound bus.

  Sheffield’s face sagged into seriousness. “You know, maybe some people aren’t as macho as you are, Gates, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t nice.”

  The handsome driver laughed as he slapped Sheffield’s knee. “Damn straight. We can’t all go tearing into Marines, you know.”

  Back in the trailer, Weeper Berg was groaning that he might as well be lying on nails, his back was so agonized. “Feh! So what am I, Count Dracula, I should have to wait for the sun to come up before I get some sleep?” Not that it was comprehensible that he should slumber; not with Toutant Kingstree (who’d told no less than the truth when he’d protested that his homemade whiskey was for his own personal use) continually refreshing himself with bits of melody between swallows of pure-grain alcohol. Out of the dark would come the murmur of his saxophone or the growl of his voice. “I danced with a gal with a hole in her stocking.” Then quietness, as he sat tilted back in his canvas chair. Then, “You can’t raise cotton on sandy land. Rather be a nigger than a poor white man.” Then, his long lanky legs stretched out, he’d softly finger the brass horn awhile. Then, “Yonder comes little Rosie. How the world do you know?” And so on down the highway south, while Raleigh sat bristling in the driver’s seat of the white Cadillac, as if he still refused to give up his plan to drive himself to Atlanta.

  Luckily, Mingo saw no highway patrols, since Gates found instructions to limit his speed amusing, and as Interstate 20 was nearly deserted in these early hours of Palm Sunday morning, he had announced, thirty miles after they’d headed off the Augusta beltway onto the big road, “Now, my friend, hang on, you’re gonna fly.” But just then Mingo did see something, something that made him scream “STOP!” so loudly that Gates, instead of flying, pumped the brakes and rolled onto the shoulder. In the trailer, Weeper Berg tumbled off his mattress, Toutant Kingstree hit his tooth on his mouthpiece, Raleigh slammed his forehead on the Cadillac’s steering wheel, and Peaches ran squealing out of her box.

  When they shoved open the rear doors, they saw Mingo Sheffield up the road under a highway light at an exit ramp. He was deep in conversation with a young blond woman in a raincoat, who held a big suitcase in both hands.

  Kingstree licked at his mouth. “’Nother inch, I would have ruined my lip and missed my chance in New Orleans. What’s he want to go try picking somebody up this time of night for, anyhow?”

  They watched the fat man hugging the girl, who seemed to be crying. Then he gestured back at the truck. She shook her head. Suddenly she crumpled against him and he caught her in his arms.

  “Picking her up is what he did,” Berg nodded. “Anywise, I think she’s got one in the oven.”

  Carrying both the girl and her large suitcase, Sheffield staggered back to the van, his face lunatic with alarm. “Raleigh, it’s Diane! We’ve got to help her! Get off the mattress, Weeper. Here, hurry, let her lie down!”

  “Oh, God,” said Hayes.

  Gates hopped out of the cab. “What the fuck…” He looked at the teenager. “Shit a brick. It’s the kid from the department store! Kure Beach, right?”

  “It’s Diane, Gates, you remember her. I helped her with her window display. That’s right.” Sheffield, gasping for breath, handed the terrified young woman up to Raleigh and Kingstree, who laid her down on the lumpy mattress. She clung tightly to her suitcase, as she stared from one to the other, her head moving in sudden jerks like a bird’s. The dozens of tight blond pigtails were dark near her scalp with sweat, and sweat matted the front of her loose cotton dress. She was panting now in shallow breaths, as she whispered, “Mingo? Mingo?” up at the circle of strange male faces above her. Raleigh, Berg, and Kingstree looked down, speechless.

  “I’m right here!” The fat man groaned as he heaved himself up into the truck and crawled over beside her to take her hands. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

  Raleigh tugged her suitcase away. The girl’s stomach was enormous. “Mingo, you know this young woman? What is she doing—?”

  “Yes, yes, I told you.” Sheffield kept his eyes on the teenager. “From Kure Beach. She was hitchhiking. She had a fight with her family, and she left. Diane, I said, take that fifty and ride the bus! But she had to save some money for when she got to Atlanta so she could look for her husband, so she got off in Columbia and started this damn hitchhiking. And some rotten rotten bastard tried to, you know, get fresh with her, and then she had to defend herself. Oh you poor thing, I’d just like to kill him, and then he just threw her out here on the highway, and she’s been standing there a whole hour too scared to do anything! It’s okay. Everything’s okay. And we can count our blessings I saw her. Out here, the middle of the night, never know what, look at her poor shoes, high heels! Oh, Lord, Diane. Everything’s fine.” The whole while he was talking, Sheffield kept patting her hands and fanning her face with his palm.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, then sucked in her breath with surprise, a
nd doubled over.

  “Diane. Listen to me,” said Raleigh. “Are you going into labor?”

  She looked up at him, startled; her childish face with its heavy, smeared makeup was clammy white. “No. No, I’m not.” She shook her head over and over. “I just got so scared.”

  “Excuse me, what, ah, month are you in?”

  “I’m not too sure,” she admitted in a gasp. “But it’s not time. The doctor said, after Easter.”

  “Well, you aren’t having contractions, are you?”

  “No, sir. No. I’m just so scared.” She heaved over in tears.

  “Mingo, let’s take her back to Augusta. There’s got to be a hospital there. And she can call her parents.”

  The girl sat up, clutching at Sheffield. “No! Please! I’m fine, really. I feel better now.” She smiled at them, wiping her eyes quickly. “You said you were going to Atlanta. Please. Just let me go with you. I’ll be okay. It’s only a few more hours to Atlanta, isn’t it?” “It’s three,” said Raleigh, and looked at his watch.

  “Her husband’s in Atlanta,” Mingo explained, his enormous arms wrapped around Diane’s shoulders.

  “Husband?” Hayes said skeptically.

  “He works at the Omni,” she told him. “He wrote me. He sells ice cream at the games.”

  “Wonderful,” Raleigh muttered to himself.

  After more discussion, Diane, now again in hiccupping tears, appealed so desperately to Mingo that he finally insisted they let her come with them to Atlanta. “I’ll sit back here with her,” he whispered. “I think she’s falling asleep. Poor thing. She’s all worn out.”

  “This we maybe don’t need,” whispered Weeper Berg to Raleigh, who agreed.

  They drove on for two full hours, the Hayes brothers in the cab, the others watching over Diane. But before they reached Atlanta, they were stopped again. This time by a man rushing out at them from the shoulder, waving his arms and yelling.