Half of Paradise (12 page)

“Johnny Big don’t look too good, neither,” the older inmate said.

“That’s enough from you,” Leander said.

“Everybody beat up on LeBlanc and the boy tried to help him,” the older inmate said. “Johnny thought he could have some fun knocking him around and he got his nose broke.”

“Is that straight, Shortboy?” the jailer asked.

“I didn’t see it too good,” Shortboy said.

“It don’t make any difference who started it,” Leander said, “because all of you are going into the tank until I see fit to let you out.” He spoke to the guards. “Get LeBlanc out of my sight. Put him downstairs and keep him there till I call an ambulance. I don’t want to see him again. Take Johnny with you and get his nose fixed.”

The guards put LeBlanc’s arms over their shoulders and lifted him. His head hung down and his feet dragged across the floor. Johnny Big followed them.

“Wait a minute,” Leander said.

Johnny Big stopped.

“You put something in your back pocket when I came in.”

“I ain’t got nothing.”

“Take it out.”

“Yes sir.”

“Now throw it on the floor and get out of here.”

“Yes sir.”

Leander picked up the razor blade and dropped it in his shirt pocket.

“Come with me,” he said to Avery.

Avery went out of the room and Leander pulled the door shut behind him. He shot the steel bolt in place and clamped down the handle of the safety lock. They went down a corridor and up a spiral metal stairwell to the third floor of the building. Leander opened the door to a bare white room with a single window and an iron cage in the center. Avery stood by the window and looked down into the street while Leander unlocked the hole. The courthouse was across the square, with its white pillars and classic façade, and the well-kept lawn in front, green and wet from the water sprinklers in the sunlight, and the Confederate monument in the shade of the trees.

“Get inside,” Ben Leander said.

Avery walked to the open door.

“What do you get out of it?” he said. “Is it the money?”

Leander pushed him inside and swung the door shut. He twisted the key in the iron lock.

“They’re taking you to the work camp next week. You’re goddamn lucky,” he said.

That afternoon Avery had a visitor. Batiste had ridden the bus from Martinique parish to see him. He sat in the waiting room with his hat in his hand, wondering who to ask about Avery. There was a package wrapped in brown paper and tied with cord by his side. Ben Leander came out of his office and asked him what he wanted. Batiste said he wanted to see Avery Broussard, he had some tobacco and breadcake for him. Leander said that he was not allowed to have visitors, no one could see him on that day or any day as long as he remained in the parish jail. Batiste wanted to leave the package.

“He’s in the hole. He can’t get anything from outside when he’s in the hole,” Leander said, to make him understand how things were run in the parish jail.

J.P. WINFIELD

He was in the recording studio of a Nashville radio station. Three mornings a week he did a half-hour show which was put on tape and broadcast in the afternoon. The show was almost over. He stood at the microphone and sang the last number. The announcer sat at the table before another microphone, reading over the typewritten pages in his hand. A very plain woman in a cotton-print dress sat on the other side of the table, nervously twisting a handkerchief around her fingers. There were two men standing beside J.P., one with a guitar and the other with a banjo. They were waiting to do the advertisement. One of the sound engineers in the control room behind the sheet of glass signaled to them when J.P. finished. They strummed and sang the Live-Again slogan:

Live-Again, Live-Again, the sick man’s friend
,

It helps you every time
,

There ain’t anything like it

That makes you feel so fine
.

Drink Live-Again today
,

Chase them miseries away
,

Get out of bed and holler
,

Live-Again for a dollar
.

“Yes sir, neighbor, there ain’t anything like it,” the announcer read. “Live-Again has got everything you need to make you get up and stomp around like your old self again. It’s got vitamin potency that drives through your body and makes you shout and holler like you was never sick a day in your life. It ain’t right to waste your life in a sickbed. There’s people all over the country setting around doing nothing because they don’t have the energy to get out and have a good time. Well, you don’t have to be a shut-in anymore. Go down to the drugstore or the grocery and ask for Live-Again vitamin tonic in the black and yellow box with the big bottle inside. There’s a lady with me now who used to be a shut-in. She couldn’t do her chores and her family was falling apart because of her poor health. She heard about Live-Again and she tried it, and now she’s healthy and strong and her family is back together again. Tell the people about it, Mrs. Ricker.”

Mrs. Ricker read in a steady, flat monotone: “I don’t know how to thank the good people who make Live-Again. They made my life worth living. Before I tried Live-Again I didn’t think I could go on anymore. I had to stay in bed all the time and I couldn’t take care of my children and my husband had to spend all our money on doctor bills. The deacon of our church told us about Live-Again, and in a few weeks’ time I was a new woman. This wonderful medicine has saved me and my family and we are happy once more.”

“And believe me, neighbor, it helps everybody,” the announcer said. “Well, that does it for today. You’ve been listening to the J. P. Winfield show. Remember to send us your cards and letters and to buy Live-Again. There ain’t anything like it. So long, neighbors, and may the good Lord watch after you.”

Drink Live-Again today
,

Chase them miseries away
,

Get out of bed and holler
,

Live-Again for a dollar
.

The red light over the door went off. The two singers put away their banjo and guitar. Mrs. Ricker twisted her handkerchief around her fingers and looked at the announcer.

“Did I sound all right?” she said.

“What do you think, J.P.?” the announcer said. “Have you ever heard anything like this good woman?” He was a business college graduate who was employed by the station to sell vitamin tonic, glow-in-the-dark Bibles, tablecloths painted with the Last Supper, and pamphlets on faith healing.

The singers laughed and went out. J.P. put his guitar in its case.

“I was never on the radio before,” Mrs. Ricker said. “Will I be on the air this afternoon?”

“Yes ma’am. They’ll hear you all over the South. Mrs. A. J. Ricker, voice of the Southland.”

“I declare,” she said. “Do you think they’ll want me to make any more recordings?”

“I don’t think so. You’d better run along home now. You don’t want to miss the afternoon show.”

“I’ll leave my phone number in case they want me again.”

“That’s fine. Goodbye.”

The door clicked shut after her.

The sound engineer stuck his head out of the control room.

“You want to hear the playback?” he said.

“Why not?” the announcer said. “Let’s hear Mrs. Ricker tell us of the wonderful medicine that saved her husband and brats from ruin.”

“I’m going back to the hotel,” J.P. said. “I don’t want to hear no more about vitamin tonic.”

He picked up his guitar case and left the studio. He walked out on the street and turned up his coat collar. It was November and the air was sharp with cold. The wind beat against him and almost whipped the guitar case from his hand. There were snow clouds building in the east, and the sky was lavender and pink from the hidden sun. He turned around the corner of a building to protect himself from the wind. There were no taxis on the street. An old woman sat in the doorway of the building with an army coat around her shoulders. She had a wagon made from apple crates, filled with old rags, newspaper bundles, and things she had taken from garbage cans. Her hands were raw and chafed. She dipped snuff from a can and spit on the sidewalk. J.P. started up the street and walked the six blocks to the hotel.

He went through the lobby into the coffee shop. The waiter brought him coffee and a plate of sandwiches. Nothing but a poor-white tenant farmer with one pair of shiny britches and a polka-dot bow tie, he thought. I paid my last five dollars to enter a crooked talent show and now I’m on the Nashville Barn Dance. Everybody from Raleigh to Little Rock can listen to me on Saturday night. Seven weeks on the Barn Dance and an afternoon show besides. Ain’t that too goddamn nice?

He thought about the few days he had taken off from the show to go up to the mountains. He had worked almost constantly since coming to Nashville. The director of the radio show had given him three days’ leave. J.P. went up by the Kentucky line and stayed in a hunting lodge. The mornings were cold and misty, and there was always a smell of pine smoke in the air. When he walked out on the front porch after breakfast he could see the log cabins spread across the valley, their stone chimneys stained white by the frost. The first snowflakes were just beginning to fall, and the mountains were green with fir and pine trees. There was a trout stream just below the timber line that wound across a meadow and rushed into a great rock chasm behind the lodge. It was good country, some of the best he had seen. He wanted to stay, but he went back to Nashville to sell Live-Again.

He took out an aspirin bottle and shook a Benzedrine and a Seconal into his hand. A month ago he had used up the supply Doc Elgin had given him. Several days later he bought ten rolls of yellow jackets, bennies, and redwings from a junkie on the other side of town. He had learned to mix the three in a combination that gave him a high alcohol never had. Soon he would have to buy more. He had only a half roll left in his room.

A porter came into the coffee shop and gave him a telegram. J.P. tipped him and tore the end off the envelope,

GET READY TO LEAVE

WILL PHONE THIS AFTERNOON

HUNNICUT.

He paid his check and went out to the lobby. He told the desk clerk to page him in the bar if he received a long distance phone call. He left the guitar case with the porter to be taken up to his room. The bar was done in deeply stained mahogany with deer antlers and antique rifles along the walls. There was a stone fireplace at one end of the room, and the logs spit and cracked in the flames. A thick wine-colored carpet covered the floor. Brass lamps with candles and glass chimneys were placed along the bar. He drank a whiskey and water and wondered what Hunnicut had planned for him now.

Later the porter paged him. He went into the lobby and took the call at the desk.

“Is that you, J.P.?” Hunnicut said over the wire.

“I got your telegram.”

“How’s Nashville treating you?”

“All right.”

“A lot of things have been happening since you Left.”

“Why am I going back?”

“We got some big things planned. Jim Lathrop is with me now. I want you to get back as soon as you can.”

“What for?”

“Jim is going into politics. He’s running for senator, and we’re campaigning for him. We’re going to organize a show and tour the state.”

“I don’t know nothing about politics.”

“You’re a star on the Barn Dance. People will listen to you.”

“Who else is going on the show?”

“Everybody in the band except Troy.”

“What happened to him?”

“He’s in a hospital. He was taking heroin. I never knew anything about it until he came out on the stage so jazzed up he couldn’t remember his lines.”

“I didn’t know he was on it.”

“When can you come back?”

“I’ll take the afternoon train.”

“I can wire you some money.”

“I don’t need none.”

“Are you still hot about that run-in we had before you left?”

“No.”

“Because we have some big things ahead of us, and we don’t want anybody to mess it up.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” J.P. said.

“Is something wrong? You don’t sound very interested.”

“I’m interested. See you in the morning.”

He put down the receiver and went to his room. He called the railroad depot and made reservations on the three o’clock train. He opened his suitcase on the bed and packed. The porter came up for his bag. J.P. had an hour and a half before train time. He took out his guitar and thumbed the strings to pass the time.
Oh the train left Memphis at half past nine. Well it made it back to Little Rock at eight forty-nine
. It was a blues song he used to hear the Negroes sing around home.
Jesus died to save me and all of my sins. Well glory to God we’re going to see him again
.

He took a private compartment in a Pullman car. He had the porter make up his bed, and he slept through the afternoon. The train moved down from Nashville into southern Tennessee, rolling through the sloping fields of winter grass partly covered with snow. The land became flat as the train neared Memphis and entered the Mississippi basin. The river was high and yellow under the winter sky. The train rushed southward into Arkansas, and the land was sere and coarse. For miles he saw the board shacks of tenant farmers, all identical, with their dirt floors and mud-brick chimneys and weathered outbuildings, which were owned by the farming companies, along with the bleak fallow land and the rice mills and cotton gins and company stores.

He changed trains at Little Rock and arrived in Louisiana the next morning. He checked into the hotel, shaved, and went to Hunnicut’s room. He met Seth in the hall.

“The Live-Again man is inside with Virdo now. They’re waiting for you,” Leroy said.