“Dal? I'm goin' to N.O.”
“You hear somethin' from Johnnie?”
“Just that they left the hotel they was stayin' in. Firetrap called the Brazil? Johnnie don't know no more.”
“Marietta, I'm dead against it. Leave Lula be. It'll take years to undo what you're doin'.”
“I can't help it, Dal. I can't just sit around waitin'.”
“I might as well tell you now about Clyde.”
“What
about
Clyde?”
“One time he come to me.”
“One time he come to you? Dal, did you and him have an affair?”
“Not nearly. No, he come to ask me about you. Before Lula was born.”
“What
about
me?”
“Thought maybe you was too high-strung to have children, and wanted my opinion.”
“Go on.”
“Told him I thought it was a good idea, your havin' a child. That he shouldn't fret.”
“Swell of you, Dal. How come you never told me before?”
“Clyde asked me not to.”
“Clyde been dead for years.”
“I promised him, Marietta.”
“So why confess now?”
“It ain't a confession.”
“Why bring it up then?”
“ 'Cause I think you're makin' a mistake, what you're doin' now. Clyde wouldn't want it.”
“Clyde ain't gonna know about it, Dalceda. Unless you got some way of communicatin' with him I ain't heard about.”
“You have a safe trip, Marietta. If you need me to do somethin' for you here, give a shout. And give my love to Lula, if you find her.”
“Dal, I know you think I'm wrong on this, but I mean well.”
“I know you do, Marietta. Bye.”
“Bye, Dal.”
After she hung up, Marietta started to cry. She cried for a full ten minutes, until the phone rang. By the fourth ring Marietta had composed herself sufficiently to pick it up.
“Marietta? It's Dal. You stop cryin' yet?”
“Just now. Almost.”
“Stop it now, hear? Pull yourself together and go do what you have to. Maybe I'm the one is wrong.”
“You ain't wrong, Dal. Not for you, anyway. You're the only one knows me.”
“Love you, Marietta.”
“Love you, Dal.”
“Bye again.”
“Bye.”
BAD IDEAS
“Sometimes I feel just like one of Dracula's wives. You know, those skinny women in see-through robes with long hair and fingernails who follow the Count around and do what he says?”
Lula was sitting on the edge of the motel bed filing her nails while Sailor did his daily fifty fingertip push-ups.
“Sure,” said Sailor, “I seen the movie. But why?”
“I get so low down. It's as if someone's sucked all the blood out of my body.”
“We all get that way once in a while, honey,” Sailor said between push-ups. “As my grandaddy used to say, ain't no one person got a monopoly on grief.”
“Oh, I know,” said Lula. “I'm not even feelin' particularly sorry for myself. It's just I'd like it sometime that Daddy hadn't died on me so soon? And that Mama wasn't such a crazy bitch more'n twice a month? And that she didn't hold it against you about havin' to kill Bob Ray Lemon? Lots and lots.”
Sailor finished the last of his fingertips and sat up with his back against the bed.
“My grandaddy used to read the obituaries every Friday mornin' at breakfast,” Sailor said. “He'd get the newspaper and commence to tell me who died and what of and all about their lives and relatives left behind. Grandaddy's shake his head and laugh and wonder about why poor departed Cleve Sumpter married his first wife, Irma Sykes, had three children and went into the millinery business in Aiken, divorced Irma, got hitched to Edna Mae Raley, quit makin' hats, opened up a barbecue restaurant in McCall, and twenty years later died of emphysema while listenin' to the Braves ball game on the front porch of a old-people's home in Asheville.”
“Sounds morbid to me,” said Lula. “Readin' the obits? I never look at 'em. And why'd he do it just on Fridays?”
“I don't know,” said Sailor. “But I enjoyed listenin' to Grandaddy talk about the people as if he knew each and every one of 'em personal.”
“What'd they write about your grandaddy when he died?” asked Lula. “Or is he still livin'?”
“He died when I was up at Pee Dee,” Sailor said. “They wouldn't let me out to go to the funeral, of course. Grandaddy was my best friend when I was a kid. Family give him some shit, I guess, 'cause he wasn't no great shakes in business, and he done some hard time early on for assaultin' an officer when he was in the service. I never read his obituary notice, if there was one, but that's fair enough. Prob'ly they didn't have much in there about his teachin' me to hunt and fish or cook biscuits.”
“Sailor?”
“Yeah?”
“Wouldn't it be fabulous if we someway stayed in love for the rest of our lives?”
Sailor laughed. “You think of the weirdest damn things to say sometimes, peanut. Ain't we been doin' a pretty fair job this far?”
Lula reached down with both of her arms and put them around Sailor's neck. She dropped her emery board on the floor.
“Oh, you know what I mean, don't you, honey? It'd make everything so simple.”
“At Pee Dee all you think about is the future, you know?” said Sailor. “Gettin' out? And what you'll do when you're on the outside again. But I'm out now and I don't know what to think about yet.”
“I just think about things as they come up,” said Lula. “I never been much of a planner.”
“It ain't altogether terrible just to let things go along sometimes,” Sailor said. “My grandaddy once read me the obituary of a man who'd owned a big manufacturin' company of some kind and run for U.S. senator four times and lost every time. âImagine all them bastards that man had to pretend to like,” Grandaddy said, âand all for nothin'.' I ain't gonna do nothin' for no good reason, Lula. All I know for sure is there's already more'n a few bad ideas runnin' around loose out there.”
Lula reached over and turned on the radio that was on the table next to the bed.
“If I could but win your heart, little girl, then I would have treasure untold.” It was Jimmie Rodgers, the Singing Brakeman.
“I love these old yodelly country songs,” said Lula. “They're all so corny but sweet, too.”
Sailor nodded. “My grandaddy told me that when Jimmie Rodgers died, he went down to the depot to watch the train that was carryin' his body back to Meridian, Mississippi, go by. Jimmie had the TB so bad they kept a cot in the recordin' studio so that he could lay down and rest after doin' a tune.”
“Musta been a lot of people loved him,” said Lula. “That must be a great feelin'. To know there's all these strangers out there think so much of you?”
“My experience, the more people get to know each other the less they get along,” said Sailor. “It's best to keep people to bein' strangers. That way they don't get disappointed so easy.”
HARD NEWS
“How much we got left, honey?”
“Under a hundred,” said Sailor.
Sailor and Lula were in a Shell station in Houston. Sailor had just filled the Bonneville with regular and checked the oil and water.
“You want to stick around here, Sailor? See if we can get some work?”
“Not in Houston. This is where they'd expect us to stop. We'll be better off in some place more out of the way.”
“You want me to drive for a stretch? Give you a chance to rest.”
“That'd be good, Lula.”
Sailor kissed her and climbed into the back seat and lay down. Lula slid behind the wheel and lit up a More. She wheeled the car back into traffic and toward the entrance to the interstate, following the loop around Houston headed for San Antonio. She clicked on the radio. Perez Prado's band, playing “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White,” came on. “Another damn oldies station,” Lula muttered, and turned the dial. She found a nationwide call-in talk show and left it there.
“Come in, Montgomery, Alabama,” said the host, a man with a gruff Brooklyn accent.
“Artie? That you, Artie?” said the caller, an elderly-sounding woman.
“Yes, ma'am. What's on your almost-perfect mind this evening?”
“How ya feelin', Artie? I heard you wasn't doin' too well recent.”
“I'm fine, thank you. I had a cardiac infarction but I'm on a new diet and exercising regularly. I've never felt better.”
“Well, that's so good to hear, Artie. You know some of us depend on you down this way. You're so entertainin' and you get so many interestin' guests.”
“Thank you. It's listeners such as yourself who made me want to get up out of that hospital bed and back into the studio as fast as I could.”
“Just remember, Artie, it's the Good Lord you got to thank for everything. He's watchin' over us.”
“Thanks for the call, ma'am. San Francisco, California, hello.”
“Hello, Artie? This is Manny Wolf in San Francisco.”
“Mark Twain said the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco. How you doin', Manny?”
“Oh, pretty good, Artie. Heard you had a heart attack.”
“Yeah, but I'm okay now.”
“Well, Bill Beaumont did a bang-up job while you were out.”
“He's number one, isn't he? What's on your almost-perfect mind tonight, Manny?”
“The Giants, Artie. They sure did a nosedive, didn't they?”
“Injuries, Manny. You can't win ball games if half the pitching staff goes down, including three starters. I look for 'em to be back in it next year.”
“They coulda made some deals, Artie.”
“With what? Nobody wants damaged goods.”
“They coulda made some deals they woulda tried.”
“Wait till next year. Thanks for callin', Manny. Boston, Massachusetts, you're on the air with Artie Mayer.”
“Jesus!” said Lula, attacking the dial. “How can anyone listen to this crap?”
She settled on an all-news station. Sailor was snoring. Lula took a last puff of her More and tossed it out the window.
“An alleged child prostitution ring that provided young girls for businessmen in Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth and other cities has been broken up by Houston police,” said the radio. “Investigators theorized that the ring, which operated out of a redbrick warehouse building on the north side of downtown Houston near Buffalo Bayou, may be part of a larger operation run out of Los Angeles and New Orleans by Vietnamese citizens.”
“Wow, this is good,” said Lula. She turned up the volume.
“The ring's activities were revealed yesterday after a fifty-five-year-old Houston pai-gow dealer was arrested for allegedly having sex with a twelve-year-old girl at an Airport Loop motel Tuesday night. Chick Go, who works at Lucky Guy's card parlor, was apprehended in a raid on the Nighty-Night Motel. He was arraigned yesterday on charges of engaging in sex acts with a child and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He was released on ten thousand dollars' bail. More arrests are expected.
“The young prostitutes' customers, said a police spokesman, were
carefully selected, primarily successful businessmen who had something to lose if they ever informed authorities about the child sex ring. Most of the prostitutes are apparently runaways who need a place to live in exchange for sexual favors. Police said they have identified and questioned at least four girls, all Asians twelve to fifteen years old, who have been living in the North Houston warehouse with a Vietnamese pimp since February. The girls are being treated as victims, said police sergeant Amos Milburn. âThese are really just children,' he said, âbut they've been exposed to a lot already.' ”
“I'll bet,” said Lula, lighting up another cigarette.
“In international news, India plans to release crocodiles in the Ganges, the holy Hindu river in which millions of people bathe annually, to scavenge for corpses, authorities said. One hundred fifty crocodiles reared at a state-owned farm in southern Kerala state will be dumped in the river near cities where corpse pollution levels are the highest. The reptiles were supposed to be of a docile species, said a senior government official, but it seems the breeders bungled and reared attack crocodiles.”
“Damn!” said Lula.
“The Indian official who supplied this information did so only on condition of anonymity. The
Crocodilus palustris
species, he said, has a reputation for killing and breeding quickly. Some one hundred thousand corpses are cremated on the banks of the Ganges in Varanasi every year, while millions of Hindus bathe in the river in the belief that the water will purify the soul and absolve them of sins. The government plans to cleanse the Ganges first at Varanasi, the holiest Hindu city. The Uttar Pradesh state authorities last October released five hundred turtles in the Ganges near Varanasi to try and reduce human pollution and now plan to put in the crocodiles to devour floating corpses dumped by Hindus too poor to pay for cremation.”
“Holy shit!” said Lula. “It's the night of the livin' fuckin' dead!”
“What's that, peanut?” said Sailor, kissing her on the ear from behind.
“I can't take no more of this radio,” she said, and switched it off. “I ain't never heard so much concentrated weirdness in my life. I know the news ain't always accurate, but the world's gettin' worse, I think, Sailor. And it don't sound like there's much we can do about it, neither.”