Doom Fox (16 page)

She snickers, 'Mister Creeper, I'm glad you in misery. You gonna be in chain gang misery if you jivin' me 'bout breakin' up with you woman Grace. Yo muckety-muck sweetie was gonna quit yo low life convic' butt soon down the line annyways. So nigguh, don't threaten me no more in no kinda way. If I weren't stove up and ailin' critical, I'd bung yo head bigger'n a Georgia watermelon 'bout you and thet tramp.'

He glares fury at her as he attempts to move past her.

She shoves him hard against the refrigerator. His face is demonic as he splinters the glass of orange juice against the linoleum.

She says, 'I hope you mad 'nough to hit me, bad nigguh, so's I can sic Lil Joe on you. He'd snatch off yo' arms and legs, niggah, an' throw 'em in the garbage can for the pick up man if he jus' even knew 'bout me ketchin' you cheatin'. If you don't straighten up fast and fly right like the song says, I'm gonna tell Lil Joe 'bout you and Grace Webb bustin' his mama's ailin' heart.'

She shifts her eyes to stare through the kitchen window at Young Joe leaving Reba's back house.

Elder Joe turns to see him, hurries past Zenobia to leave the kitchen as she says 'I'd tell him now on you if I could stand the sight of blood.'

Young Joe enters the kitchen, hugs Zenobia as she starts to stoop to pick up the broken glass. He says, 'Mama, let that slide. C'mon, sit down and let me lay the latest Baptiste happenings on you.' He leads Zenobia to a chair at the kitchen table.

At the front of the Allen house, pre-teen preaching whiz, the Reba smitten Reverend Felix Junior, pulls to the curb in his chauffeured black Cadillac limousine. His cute face is radiant with anticipation as he gets out to pay Reba a social visit under the pretext of offering her his newly created position of assistant church secretary.

9

In the spring of the following year of 1948, Zenobia, the great thoroughbred workhorse, lies retired and sleepless in the quiet of midnight. Medicine bottles on a nightstand glitter in a spot of early May moonlight like the flash of silicone gems on a headstone.

Elder Joe, in his bedroom down the hall, flicks on a nightstand lamp to torture himself with a recent edition of the black Los Angeles Sentinel newspaper. Tears well as he scans, for the dozenth time, one of its society pages devoted entirely to pictures and copy of the Acapulco marriage of Judge Evans and Marguerite Spingarn, adorable in peach peau de soie and lace.

Joe silently screams, 'Oh Marite!' as he stares into the depths of the mesmeric eyes of her paper image. He groans, feels a hybrid twinge of loss, rage and guilt for Zenobia's Christmas Day stroke while serving her white woman's dinner party.

He painfully remembers his creative nastiness until her stroke, calculated to punish her and zoom her blood pressure. This, of course, in the long absences of Young Joe, full time on his stepfather's plumbing job and part time as a night watchman. He rises to check on Zenobia, dead from the waist down, who is unaware of her inoperable cancer of the pancreas. On cane, he goes to her cracked door, hears her softly praying.

She sees his shadow. Bitterness deforms her mouth, closes her eyes to feign sleep as he comes to sit on the side of the bed. He whispers, 'Zen, I know you ain't sleep ... you all right? Can I do anything, get you anything?'

She turns to focus malevolent eyes on him as she rasps, 'Lemme alone, ya dirty cruel niggah! Ya gonna pay! G'wan and git 'cause I got Lil Joe and Reba to do alla nursin' I needs.'

She gouges fingernails into the back of his hand when he pats her dead thigh, screeches, 'Git! Ya crippul motel snake! I'm gonna tell Lil Joe 'bout the cause of his mama's stroke iffen ya don stay outta my face.'

He rises, and struggles back to his bed on arthritis quaked legs.

Across the hall, Young Joe gazes at Reba's nude body beside him. He thinks she is almost back to normal curvaceousness after the birth of Pretty Melvin's stillborn baby in early March past. He feels himself palpitate wildly after his maiden ride between her banana yellow thighs. His ride ticket was validated a week to the day ago since he slipped the pain stained Delphine diamond on Reba's finger. He had kept the ring as a lode stone to attract visions of Delphine and to keep the memory of her grifter yapping at bucking climax masturbating through his mind.

A mellow fit two ways, Joe had thought, and anyway, ain't no doubt Reba has always been my wet dream queen. Now he closes his eyes, moans to himself, 'I done had enough hurt to make the angels wanta bawl, as Mama's always saying. Sure hope Reba don't lay no grief on me. You choose wise and fast 'cause ain't no other fox fine as Reba nowhere, no time, gonna hook up with you, my man, 'cause you the ugliest niggah in L.A. Baby Kong, you maybe the world champ of ugly.' He smiles stingily at his bitter humor.

His eyes are puppy soft as he watches Reba slip into her quilted housecoat at the side of the bed. They kiss before she silently opens the door, carefully closing it behind her. She peeks at Zenobia through her cracked door as she moves on tiptoes to the stairway.

Clean shaven Baptiste awaits her, piqued, on the living room couch, a sight to gallop Phillipa's cruel maverick heart, attired as he is in the neat silver buttoned cop blue uniform of the rent-a-night watchman firm that has employed him for two months and Young Joe for several weeks. He stands and wears the supporting belt of the holstered pistol low on his slim hips, perhaps in the fashion of an aging star in the fast-draw blood sport of the Old West.

His silver braided cop-like cap glints brightly as he dips his head toward the Allen house. 'Jeez, they are breaking you down. You look awful bad Mouse. I can't get why you drain yourself nursing her for free.'

Reba studies his face as she lights a cigarette. 'It's easy Papa. She's my friend. I like her a lot, no love her a lot. And Papa, don't call me Mouse!'

He takes her hand, stares at Young Joe's engagement ring for a moment before he looks deeply into her eyes.

'I can't get it why you accepted that ring. He's not one point your type. You couldn't ever love that klutz as a husband.'

She frees her hand. 'I can try Papa. It's my life. In lingo you can get, I'm Joe's royal flush catch. He has worshipped me and loved me since I was ten. But best of all, he's a stone man. I'm through with the self-centered sissified Melvins of the world. Get it!?'

Baptiste slowly nods his head, kisses her forehead before he leaves the house for his lumber yard shift.

A month later, in the hush of pre-dawn, Young Joe, awakened by Zenobia's loud delirium, hastens to her bedside. Sorrow trembles him as he stands staring down at her writhing, sweat-drenched figure, wasted skeletal inside her flannel nightgown.

She laughs as she jerks her head in excitement. Young Joe watches the long braids of her hair whip about her head. Her braids in motion remind him of the snowy bunting whipping on the facade of the Allens' Down Home Café dream that came true on that windy day of its grand opening when he was just a gangling kid.

His face hardens as he hears her babble, 'Lookit you sweet patootie's chopped off haid layin' there, Mister Midnight Creeper ... ya cryin' over Grace! ... shucks! ... Fool, you need to cry, 'cause ya ain't never cried over me ...' She breaks into tears, blubbers, 'But ya gonna pay, Joe Allen, 'cause ah'm tellin' Lil Joe how ya and yo sneak sweetie near dropped his mama dead layin' up in that motel.'

A moment of lucidity focuses her eyes on his face. 'Promise Mama ya gonna stop the ring fightin' an' marry my play daughter an' git kids.'

He exclaims, 'I promise with all my heart Mama! But I need you!'

Suddenly she bolts erect against her pillows, arms reaching, eyes bulging, hypnotized by divine visitation. She claps her hands, shouts, 'Hallelujah! Prechus Lamb! Ya done come to take me home!' as she gazes at her Sweet Jesus, golden tressed and sky-blue-eyed framed in white flame by a nimbus bright as an exploding star. She sees him smile beatifically as he beckons from the doorway.

Joe drops onto the bed, embraces her waist to restrain her feeble lunge from the bed. He buries his face in her bosom, sobs, 'Mama, you ain't seeing him for real. Please don't die and leave me for no jive Holy Ghost, Mama! Even if He's real, He's gonna Jim Crow you up there like He did down here. He's gonna have you slaving up there for the white folks!'

She struggles with eyes on fire, 'Hush up you blasphemin' mouf, Lucifer, an' let me loose!' She stiffens, then falls back limply on the pillows, whispers, 'Ah'm so tired ... lemme go!' She closes her eyes and heaves a mighty sigh before she dies.

Joe takes her into his arms, rocks her as he pleads, 'I love you Mama! Please have mercy on poor me and come back. Oh Mama, come back to your child!' He weeps piteously as he cradles her shrunken body. 'Mama! Mama! Mama!'

He releases her corpse, whirls on the bedside when he hears an explosion of bleating weeping. He tenses, slit-eyed, as he glares at Elder Joe as he shakily rides his cane to bedside, his contorted face flooded with tears.

He blubbers, 'Oh Son! Zen's Sweet Jesus has snatched her from us!' He puts a hand on Joe's shoulder.

He slams his fist down on the back of Elder Joe's hand with such force that he howls with pain through his weeping as he staggers backward into a chair.

Young Joe springs from the bed to lean into his face. 'Niggah, don't you never touch me again!' he shouts as he seizes Elder Joe's crooked arthritic hands and crushes them in his gargantuan hands. He tightens the vise until the screaming old man's defecation backs him away.

'Son, you crazy!? Why you abusing me like this?' he croaks as he struggles up to his feet on cane.

He cringes away from Joe's maniacal face and snarling indictment, 'You and a broad named Grace kilt my mama, motherfuckah!'

'Me? Killed Zen!?' the accused whines.

'Yeah, for a piece of pussy, you busted her heart and planted that cancer in her. You need killing!'

Elder Joe scuttles for the door, his guilty face pleads 'no contest' to the crime.

Young Joe seizes his shoulders, spins him, says in a vicious stage whisper, 'Stay outta my face forever 'cause I'm gonna kill your old crippled ass if you don't. Understand, murderer!?'

Elder Joe frantically dips his grey head as he eases away to the safety of the hallway. Joe slams the door shut behind him. He turns and bellows grief until he can only whisper, 'Mama! Mama!' as he stares into Zenobia's blank eyes.

It was several days later that the standing-room-only funeral was held, with preaching prodigy, the Reverend Felix the Second, presiding. The esteem and love of the congregation felt for Zenobia is poignantly exhibited by the number of mourners that burst into tears as they file past her black lace shrouded remains in her coffin beneath the pulpit.

But it is Elder Joe, a bitter pawn of guilt, who charges the somber air with gasping melodrama when he screams, seizes and crushes the remains to his chest.

He rivets his hostile eyes on a twice life sized bronze image of Christ looming from an alcove above the choir stand and bellows, 'You let 'em stone my pappy dead and now you've gone and let my dear old girl die! Send me to them! Kill me now if you got the power Holy Monster!'

The blasphemy leaves a sea of shocked faces in its wake and mutterings of outrage. He is barely restrained by mortician aides and ushers, who lead him whimpering back to his front pew seat. But then at the graveside he tops his maudlin church sideshow by a lunge to the lip of the yawning grave as the casket lowers.

He is again restrained as he bleats, 'Bury me with my Zen Saint! I don't want to live without her!'

All the way home from the cemetery, in the family limousine, Young Joe compulsively darts evil eyes at Elder Joe, seated trance like on the back cushions between Reba and his stepson.

That night Elder Joe awakes from eggshell sleep-popping panic sweat. He recoils from the sight of Young Joe rising from the side of the bed staring at him as mute tears glisten on his oddly serene face.

He gets out of bed when Young Joe murmurs, 'Good night Creeper' and saunters from the room. He laboriously hip-pushes the dresser across the door.

He stares at a picture of himself and Young Joe, at twelve, fishing from a river bank. He picks up and gazes at a picture showing him riding Young Joe, at four, on his knee. He weeps as he removes his pistol from a dresser drawer. He lets himself down into a chair facing the door with a grim face.

Within a week he flees the horror prospects of his death or his murder of the stepson he has always loved with blood bonded passion. He finds refuge in a spare bedroom of Panther Cox's apartment above his Cox's Freeway Fresh Fish Market. It sits in near abutment to one of the main traffic arteries at the end of a ghetto business street. Elder Joe clerks part time for grocery and pocket money.

A month after Zenobia's funeral, the church is again S.R.O. for the wedding of Joe and Reba. Reba is dressed in a curve clinging bridal gown of rose satin which does not yet reveal that she is 'in the family way.' Happy Joe is a resplendent giant attired in a tailored indigo tuxedo.

Baptiste begrudgingly gives the bride away. He leaves the church immediately after the 'I do's' for his Packard.

The couple move through kisses and congratulations and a rice blizzard to Zenobia's La Salle gleaming richly in the fiery June sun. They drive away to a week's honeymoon in San Francisco, blessed effusively by a hundred word telegram of good wishes and love from Phillipa, bedded, but finally recovering from a recurring and mysterious malady.

Near the end of 1948, a week before Christmas, Panther Cox sits at the Allen kitchen table. He sips Sunday morning coffee with bathrobed Young Joe, who feeds his month premature but healthy, two week old carbon replica, Joe Allen the Third, purring contentment on his lap.

Housecoated Reba washes breakfast dishes at the kitchen sink as she glances at coveralled Baptiste busy beneath the hood of his Packard in the alley behind the Allen house. Supervisor Susie yaps on a fender.

Cox's Original Man's face is serious as he breaks a long silence. 'Lil Joe, you're grown and I'm not here to pressure you no kinda way into a decision about your dad. But, like I told you, he's gonna wind up in the state joint for crazies soon. He's bad off. He doesn't gig in the store any more. He just lies in bed with a spooky look on his face mumbling to the ceiling. I been locking him in when I leave the pad to keep him from playing traffic roulette in his pajamas like he did last week.