Sweet Land Stories

by E. L. Doctorow

  She found herself thinking that if you shaved off Coco’s scraggly lip beard and if his tattoos could be scrubbed away, and you took off his boots with the lifts in them and got him a haircut and maybe set a pair of eyeglasses on his nose, he would look not unlike her first husband, the late Mickey Holler, and she began to cry.

  For a while she was sympathetic to Coco’s ways and wanted to believe his stories. But it became more and more difficult. He was away in his damn car half the time, leaving her to man the shop as if he didn’t care what business they lost. He kept all moneys to himself. She realized she was working without a salary, which only a wife would do—who else would stand for that? It was a kind of slavery, wasn’t it? Which is what Kendra said, tactlessly, when she came to visit. Coco was critical of most everything Jolene did or said. And when she needed money for groceries or some such he would only reluctantly peel off a bill or two from his carefully hoarded wad. She began to wonder where he got all his cash—certainly not from the tattooing trade, which was not all that great once the dry, cold Arizona winter set in. And when a reasonable-looking woman did come in, he carried on saying all sorts of suggestive things as if they were the only two people in the room. I really don’t like that, Jolene told him. Not at all. You married yourself a good-lookin’ stud, Coco said. Get used to it. And when Jolene found herself doing a snake or a whiskered fish for some muscleman, and, as you’d expect working so closeup, he’d come on to her, all Coco could say when she complained was, That’s what makes the world go roun’. She became miserable on a daily basis. The drugs he was dealing took up more and more of his time and when she confronted him he didn’t deny it. In fact, he said, it was the only way to keep the shop going. You should know without I have to tell you, Jolene, no artist in this USA can make it he don’t have somethin’ on the side.

  One day a taxicab pulled up and a woman carrying a baby and holding a valise came into the store. She was a blonde, very tall, statuesque even, and although the sign was clearly printed on the store window, she said, Is this the Institute of Body Art of which Coco Leger is the proprietor? Jolene nodded. I would like to see him, please, the woman said, putting the valise down and shifting the baby from one arm to the other. She looked about thirty or thirty-five and she was wearing a hat, and had just a linen jacket and a yellow dress with hose and shoes, which was most unusual on this winter day in Phoenix, or in any season of the year for that matter, where you didn’t see anyone who wasn’t wearing jeans. Jolene had the weirdest feeling come over her. She felt that she was a child again. She was back in childhood—she’d only been a pretend adult and was not Mrs. Coco Leger except in her stupid dreams. It was a premonition. She looked again at the baby and at that moment knew what she didn’t have to be told. Its ancestry was written all over its runty face. All it lacked was a little lip beard.

  And you are? Jolene asked. I am Marin Leger, the wife of that fucking son of a bitch, the woman said.

  As if any confirmation was needed, her large hand coming around from under the baby’s bottom had a gold band impressed into the flesh of its fourth finger.

  I have spent every cent I had tracking him down and I want to see him now, this very instant, the woman said. A moment later, as if a powerful magic had been invoked, Coco’s Caddy rolled to the curb and it may have been worth everything to see the stunned expression on his face as he got out of the car and both saw Marin Leger and was seen by her through the shop window. But, being Coco, he recovered nicely. His face lit up and he waved as if he couldn’t have been more delighted. And came through the door with a grin. Looka this, he said. Will ya looka this! he said, his arms spread wide. Because she was the taller of the two, the hug he gave her mashed his face against the baby in her arms, who commenced to cry loudly. And as Coco stepped back he suffered the free hand of the woman smartly against his cheek.

  Now, darlin’, just be calm, he told her, stay calm. There is an esplanation for everthin’. Come with me, we have to talk, he said to her, as if he’d been waiting for her all along. Believe it or not I am greatly relieved to see you, he said to her. He took no further notice of the kid in her arms, and as he picked up her bag and ushered her out the door, he looked back at Jolene and told her out of the side of his mouth to hold tight, to hold tight, and outside he gallantly opened the car door for Marin Leger and sat her and their baby down and went off with them in the plum-color Caddy 1965 convertible he had once driven up every day to see Jolene wiggle her ass on skates.

  Jolene, Jolene, of the Dairy Queen, she is so mean, she smashed the machinery. . . . She had never been so calm in her life as she quietly and methodically trashed the Leger Institute of Body Art, turning over the autoclave, pulling down the flash posters, banging the tattoo guns by their cables against the rear exposed brick wall until they cracked, scattering the needle bars, pouring the inks on the floor, pulling the display case of 316L stainless-steel body jewelry off the wall, tearing the paperback tattoo books in the rotating stand. She smashed the director’s chairs to pieces and threw a metal footstool through the back-door window. She went upstairs and, suddenly aware for the first time how their rooms smelled of his disgusting unwashed body, she busted up everything she could, tore up the bedding, swept everything out of the medicine cabinet, and pulled down the curtains she had chosen to make the place more homey. She took an armful of her clothes and stuffed them into two paper sacks and when she found in a shoebox on their closet shelf a Ziploc plastic bag with another inside it packed with white stuff that felt under the thumb like baking powder, she left it exactly where it was and, downstairs again, cleaned out the few dollars that were in the cash register, picked up the phone, left a precise message for the Phoenix PD, and, putting up the BACK IN FIVE sign, she slammed the door behind her and was gone.

  She was still dry-eyed when she went to the pawnshop two blocks away and got fifteen dollars for her wedding band. She waited at the storefront travel agency where the buses stopped and didn’t begin to cry till she wondered, for the first time in a long time, who her mom and dad might have been and if they were still alive as she thought they must be if they were too young to do anything but name her Jolene and leave her for the authorities to raise.

  IN VEGAS she waitressed at a coffee shop till she had enough money to have her hair straightened, which is what the impresario of the Starlet Topless told her she had to do if she wanted a job. So if she shook her head as she leaned back holding on to the brass pole, her hair swished back and forth across her shoulders. Wearing a thong and high heels was not the most comfortable thing in the world, but she got the idea of things quickly enough and became popular as the most petite girl in the place. The other girls liked her, too—they called her Baby and watched out for her. She rented a room in the apartment of a couple of them. Even the bouncer was solicitous after she lied to him that she was involved.

  When she met Sal, a distinguished gray-haired man of some girth, it was at the request of the manager, who took her to a table in the back. That this man Sal chose not to sit at the bar and stare up her ass suggested to her he was not the usual bum who came into Starlet’s. He was a gentleman who though not married had several grandchildren. The first thing he did on their first date when she came up to his penthouse suite was show her their pictures. That’s the kind of solid citizen Mr. Sal Fontaine was. She stood at the window looking out over all of Vegas. Quiet and soft-spoken Sal was not only a dear man, as she came to know him, but one highly respected as the founder and owner of Sal’s Line, with an office and banks of phones with operators taking calls from people all over the country wanting Sal’s Line on everything from horses to who would be the next President. Without ceremony, which was his way, he put a diamond choker on her neck and asked her to move in with him. She couldn’t believe her luck, living with a man highly regarded in the community in his penthouse suite of six rooms overlooking all of Vegas. It had maid service every morning. From the French restaurant downstairs you could order dinner on a rolling cart that
turned into a table. Sal bought her clothes, she signed his name at the beauty parlor, and when they went out, though he was so busy it was not that often, she was treated with respect by the greeters, and by Sal’s associates, mostly gentlemen of the same age range as his. She was totally overwhelmed. With all the leggy ass in Las Vegas, imagine, little Jolene, treated like a princess! And not only that but with time on her hands to develop a line of her own, of greeting cards she drew, psychedelic in style, sometimes inspired by her experience with tattoo designs but always with the sentiments of loving family relationships that she dreamed up, as if she knew all about it.

  She never thought she could be so happy. Sal liked her to climb all over him, he liked her to be on top, and they were very tender and caressing of one another, certainly on her part, because always in the back of her mind was the fear of his overexerting himself. And he talked so quietly, and he believed or pretended to believe her life story—the parts that were made up as well as the parts that were true.

  As she became used to the life, she reflected that Sal Fontaine did not give of himself easily. It wasn’t a matter of his material generosity. He never confided in her. There was a distance in him, or maybe even a gloom, that for all his success he could not change in himself. If she had questions, if she was curious, she met a wall. He moved slowly, as if the air set up a resistance just to him. When he smiled it was a sad smile despite his capped teeth. And he had heavy jowls and hooded sad eyes made darker by the deep blue pouches under them. Maybe he could not forget what he had lost, his old country or his original family, who was she to say?

  She would tell him she loved him, and at the moment she said it, she did. The rest of the time she sort of shrugged to herself. The contractual nature of their relationship was all too clear to her, and she began to suspect that the regard Sal’s friends held for her was not what they might have expressed among themselves. Her life, once the novelty wore off, was like eating cotton candy all day long. Her long straight red hair now shone with highlights. In the mornings she would swim in the hotel Olympic-size pool with her hair in a single braid, trailing. She was this Jolene person who wore different Vegas-style outfits depending on the time of day or night. She saw herself in an I. Magnin fitting-room mirror one day and the word that came to her mind was hard. When had it happened that she’d taken on that set of the mouth and stony gaze of the Las Vegas bimbo? Jesus.

  One evening they were sitting watching television and Sal said, out of the blue, that she didn’t have to worry, she would be taken care of, he would settle something on her. Thank you, sweetheart, she said, not knowing exactly how or when he would do that but understanding the essential meaning—that she was in a situation designed not to last. The next morning she took all her greeting-card designs to a print shop at the edge of town and spent two hours making decisions about the stock she wanted, the layouts, the typefaces, the amounts to print of each item, and so on. It was real business and it made her feel good, even though she had no idea of who would distribute her cards let alone who would buy them. Step by step, she told herself in the cab back. Step by step.

  A week later the phone rang just when they were getting up and Sal told her quickly to get dressed and go have breakfast in the coffee shop because some men were coming for a meeting. She said that was okay, she would stay out of the way in the bedroom with a cup of coffee and the Sun. Don’t argue, he shouted, and threw a dress at her face. She was speechless—he had never yelled at her before. She was waiting for the elevator when the doors opened and they came out, the men to meet with Sal. She saw them and they saw her, two of them looking, like so many of the men in Vegas, as if they had never felt the sun on their face.

  But then in the coffee shop it dawned on her. She all at once turned cold and then sick to her stomach. She ran to the ladies’ and sat there in a cold sweat. Such stories as you heard were never supposed to intrude into your own life.

  How long did she sit there? When she found the courage to come out, and then out of the coffee shop into the lobby, she saw an ambulance at the front entrance. She stood in the crowd that gathered and saw the elevator doors open and someone with an oxygen mask over his face and hooked up to an intravenous line being wheeled on a gurney through the lobby.

  That it was Sal Fontaine was quickly agreed upon by everyone. Exactly what had happened to him was less clear. Finally, a police officer walking by said it was a heart attack. A heart attack.

  She did not even have her purse, just the orange print mini she wore and the sandals. She didn’t even have any makeup—she had nothing. She saw the name of the hospital on the ambulance as it drove off and decided to go upstairs and put something on and take a cab there. But she couldn’t move. She walked up the winding staircase to the mezzanine and sat there in an armchair with her hands between her knees. Finally, she got up the courage to go back to the penthouse floor. If it was a heart attack, what were the police and TV cameras doing there? Everyone in the world was in the corridor, and the door to the apartment was sealed with yellow tape and under guard and everything was out of her reach—Mr. Sal Fontaine, and all her clothes, and her diamond choker, and even the money he had given her over time, despite the fact that he never allowed her to pay for anything.

  She had over a thousand dollars in the drawer on her side of the bed. She knew that eventually she could reclaim it if she wanted to be questioned by the police. But whatever was to happen to her now might not be as bad as what would happen if she risked it. Even if she told them nothing, what would Sal’s Line be on the chances of her living to her nineteenth birthday, which happened also to be the next day? He was not around to tell her.

  Which is how life changes, as lightning strikes, and in an instant what was is not what is and you find yourself sitting on a rock at the edge of the desert, hoping some bus will come by and take pity on you before you’re found lying dead there like any other piece of road kill.

  TWO YEARS LATER, Jolene was living alone in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She had heard from a truck driver at a whistle stop in north Texas, where she was waiting tables, that Tulsa was a boomtown with not enough people for all the jobs. She’d taken a room at a women’s residential hotel and first found work, part-time, in the public library shelving books and then full-time as a receptionist at a firm that leased oil-drilling equipment. She had not been with anyone in a while, but it was kind of nice actually. She was surprised at how pleasant life could be when you were on your own. She liked the way she felt walking in the street or sitting at a desk. Self-contained. Nothing begging inside her. I have come of age, she told herself. I have come of age.

  To make some extra cash, she worked after hours on a call basis for a caterer. She had to invest in the uniform—white blouse, black trousers, and black pumps—but each time she was called it meant sixty dollars, for a minimum three hours. She wore her hair in the single braid down her back and she kept her eyes lowered as instructed but, even so, managed to see a good deal of the upper crust of Tulsa.

  She was serving champagne on a tray at a private party one evening when this six-footer with blow-dried hair appeared before her. He was good-looking and he knew it. He grabbed a glass of champagne, drank it off, took another, and followed her into the kitchen. He didn’t get anything out of her but her name, but he tracked her down through the caterer and sent her flowers with a note, signed Brad G. Benton, asking her out to dinner. Nobody in all her life had ever done that.

  So she bought herself a dress and went out to dinner with Brad G. Benton at the country club, where the table linen was starched and there were crystal wineglasses and padded red leather chairs with brass studs. She wouldn’t remember what she ate. She sat and listened with her hands in her lap. She didn’t have to say much; he did all the talking. Brad G. Benton was not thirty-five and already a senior V.P. at this stock brokerage where they kept on giving him bonuses. He didn’t want just to get her in bed. He said since Jesus had come into his heart, the only really good sex remaining to him wa
s connubial sex. He said, Of course you need someone precious and special enough for that, like you, Jolene, and looked deeply into her eyes.

  At first, she couldn’t believe he was serious. After a couple of more dates she realized he was. She was thinking Brad G. Benton must be crazy. On the other hand, this was the Bible Belt—she had seen these super-sincere people at her receptionist’s job. They might be rich and do sophisticated business around the world, but they were true believers in God’s written word, with no ifs, ands, or buts. From the looks of things it was a knockout combination, though a little weird, like they had one foot in the boardroom and one in heaven.

  You don’t know anything about me, Jolene told him in an effort to satisfy herself of her integrity. I expect soon to know everything, he said flashing a big handsome smile that could have been a leer.

  He was so damn cocky. She almost resented that there was never any doubt in his mind as to what she would say. He insisted she quit her job and move to a hotel at his expense until the wedding day. Oh, what day is that? she said, teasing, but he was a wild man: The engagement will necessarily be short, he said, slipping a diamond ring on her finger.