Hot Springs (41 page)

“Earl, you are a hard, strange fellow, I do declare.”

They parked in an alley, and the dogs barked and scuffled. They slipped in a back gate and went up to the door and knocked.

In time, stirrings from inside suggested human habitation. Finally, the door opened a crack, and an old man’s face peered out at them, eyes full of the fear that any black man would feel when two large white men in hats showed up knocking after dark.

“No need to worry, pop,” said Earl. “Don’t mean you no harm. Memphis Dogood’s gal Marie-Claire gave us your name. We are what they call them Jayhawkers, trying to push the Grumley boys out of town.”

The old man’s face lit in delight suddenly. A smile beamed through the eight decades’ worth of woeful wrinkles that had meshed his face into a black spider web and for just a second, he was young again, and believed in the righteous way of progress.

“Suhs, I just wanna shake your hand if I may,” said the gendeman, putting out a cottony old hand that felt a hundred years old. Earl shook it, and it was light as a butterfly.

“Do come in, do come in. Lord, Lord, you are the righteous, that I know.”

“We’re just polices, sir,” said Earl. “We do our job, and white or colored don’t matter to us.”

“Lord, that be a miracle on earth,” said the old man.

He took them into his living room, which boasted a batch of old chairs and an altar. Up front was a cross. Two candles flickered in perpetual devotion.

“Lord, Lord,” he said. “Lord, Lord, Lord.”

Then he turned. “I am the Reverend Jubilee Lincoln, of the New Light Tabernacle. That was the niece of one of my flock them Grumleys done kilt. You remember?”

Earl did. The black girl. At the top of the stairs. Crying, her eyes pumping moisture. The shiver in her whole body, the shakiness in her knees.

“I’m sorry,” said Earl. “We saved the ones we could. Wasn’t nothing we could have done about that gal. It’s messy work.”

“Alvina was a wild gal, like her mama, suh,” said the Reverend Jubilee Lincoln. “Her mama died in a ‘hohouse too, sorry to say. The word of Jesus don’t mean nothin’ to either of them gals, and they paid the price. Her daddy is mighty upset too. That man ain’t stopped cryin’ all day, ever day, ever since.”

“It does happen that way sometimes,” said D. A. “Sin begets doom, often as not. But I’m sure she went to heaven. She was walking righteous toward the law when them Grumleys finished her.”

“Amen,” said the Reverend Jubilee Lincoln. “I want to thank you, suhs. You sent some Grumleys to hell, and specially you sent old Pap Grumley there too, even if you didn’t shoot him yo’self. Ain’t no white men take so much risk to save cullud gals, as I hear it.”

“We tried, Dr. Lincoln,” said Earl. “We saved most. It pains us we weren’t able to save all.”

He couldn’t remember the girl’s name even. But he remembered the bullets hitting her and how heavily she fell down the stairs and how she died in his arms.

“Them gambler fellas don’t give no two nothin’s ‘bout no culluds,” said the old man. “I cleaned toilets and spittoons in the Ohio for fifty years, till I couldn’t bend over no more, and nobody never called me nothin’ but Jubilee, and nobody never gave nothin’ about any of mine or what happened to them, no suh. You two is the only righteous white peoples I ever met.”

Earl took a deep breath. Then he looked at D. A. Then he said, “You say you were the janitor at the Ohio?”

“Yes suh. Yes suh, and a hard job it be, specially since they put all them damn phones inside and all them boys sit there takin’ inf’mation and smokin’ and spitdn’ and drinkin’. It was a mess most nights.”

“Sir? Would you—?”

“Would I what, suh?”

“Would you sign a statement saying you saw a telephone room in the Ohio?”

“That Mr. Maddox and them Grumleys, they like to kill me dead if they find out.”

“It would be dangerous, that’s true,” said Earl. “But we’d keep you protected until it’s over.”

“Suh, if them Grumley crackers decide to kill a Negro man in this town, nothin’ but the Lord Almighty could stop ‘em.”

“Well sir, we’re trying to end that kind of thing. End it for good and all.”

The old man considered.

“I reckon, the good Lord’s gonna call me to Glory anyhows, soon enough. Been around eighty-seven years. Hell, if it rile them Grumleys up, I be glad to do it!”

You could not deny how beautiful she was. How a woman could have hair that red, maracas that melony, a waist that narrow, hips that round and legs that long was something on the level of the truly miraculous. Her lips were like strawberries, her eyes green and forever. Everywhere she went, it might as well be sparing.

“Virginia, you look so wonderful, darling,” said Owney. “Cocktail?”

“Fabulous,” said Virginia.

“Martini?”

“Absolutely dah-vine, sugar. Dip the olives in the vermouth, that’ll be quite enough.”

“Yes, my dear,” said Owney. “Ralph, you heard Miss Virginia. Care to come out on the terrace? It’s lovely and the view is quite spectacular.”

“Of course. But I want you to show me around. What a fabulous place. It’s so New York here. It’s a little bit of New York in the heart of little old Arkansas, I do declare!”

“We try, darling. We try so hard.”

“Oh, birds! I never would have guessed.”

They walked to his pigeons, cooing and lowing in their little cages.

“They’re adorable. So soft, so cuddly.”

The word soft, pronounced by Virginia Hill above the two most perfect breasts in all of the white world, more beautiful than a Lana’s, a Rita’s, and Ava’s, almost knocked Owney out. He needed a drink, and to focus hard.

Ralph arrived.

“Martini, m’dear?” said Owney. “Low on the vermouth, as you requested.”

“Sweet as shoefly pie and apple-pan dowdy, I declare.”

She was really laying on her Scarlett O’Hara imitation with a trowel. She took the drink, winked at Owney through it, and …

Gulp!

“That was fabulous. Could Gin-gin have another winky?”

“Ralph, run get Miss Hill another winky.”

“Yes sir,” said Ralph.

Owney took Virginia to look at Central Avenue, hazy in the falling dusk sixteen floors below.

“Ain’t it a sight? Sugar, that is some sight. Can’t b’lieve it’s in the same South where Miz Virginia done growed up. Winky makes Gin-gin feel good. Where Gin-gin growed up was pure Southern-fried dogshit, complete with them uncles couldn’t keep them fingers to themselves.”

She threw him a smile, and sort of scrunched her shoulders in a practiced way that seemed to crush the immense breasts together more poetically, as if to mount them on a silver platter and present them for his pleasure.

“Virginia, come sit over here, in the arbor.”

They sat. Gin-gin’s second winky arrived. Gulp!

“Another, Ralph.”

“Yes, boss.”

“Now Virginia, I suspect you have a message for me.”

“Oh, Owney, you don’t miss trick one, do you, honey?” She touched his leg and flashed a mouthful of teeth at him. He vowed that he’d have two of the best gals sent over from the best house tonight, and drown in flesh.

“Well,” she said primly, “Ben is worried that…” and off she went, explaining how Ben worried that Owney would take offense at his, Ben’s, plans in the desert, exactly as Ben had laid it out for her, with a few breathless giggles, and a few fleshy quivers of the mighty boobs thrown in here and there for emphasis.

“The thought”—Owney laughed when she was done—”that I would take offense at anything Ben did in Nevada, why, darling, it’s almost adorable. Ben is my favorite son. Of all my boys, he’s the best, the smartest, the quickest. I’m honored that he’s chosen me as his hero and that he seeks to emulate me. Why, what he accomplishes in that desert will be a monument to me, and I’m touched. Virginia, sweetness, do you hear? Touched “

“I sure am happy that you’re so happy.”

“I’m so happy too. I genuinely appreciate the way Ben keeps me informed. In our business, communication skills are so important. Why, good heavens, it’s almost dinnertime. We’ll dine at the Southern. There’s a most amusing fellow you’ll meet, a business associate of mine.”

“Sugar, I can’t wait. But can I run to the ladies’ first?”

“Why of course, my darling. Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

She tottered off on her heels, that body that seemed to have stepped off a Liberator fuselage only barely shielded by the artful languor of her gown, her flesh undulating underneath its strictures.

Owney tried to think. He had no buzz on because his own martini was pure spring water. What does this mean? What is going on? What is the hidden message?

“Why, Owney. Why Owney, what on earth is this?”

Owney rose, walked in to see Virginia standing awestruck in front of his Braque.

“You didn’t see that the last time, Virginia?”

“No, I was trying to make time with Alan Ladd to get a picture.”

“Well, then, my dear, that is art.”

“There’s something about it,” she said.

“Ben said it reminded him of Newark.”

Virginia burst out with a laugh so spontaneous it shook him.

“That silly!” she said. “That boy don’t know a thing.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Why’s it all square?”

“It’s called Cubism, darling. An early modernist movement, which broke down the convention of the narrative and the objective. It communicates the power of ideas over precise information. One can feel its power. Actually when Ben says ‘Newark,’ in his way he’s not far wrong. Braque called it Houses at L’Estaque. But it’s not about houses. It’s really about the power of the universe and how its deepest secrets are hidden from us.”

She looked at him all goo-goo-eyed.

“Why, honey, I never knew you were so smart! You sound like a regular Albert Einstein.”

“It’s not quite e equals mc squared, but in its way it’s an equally radical supposition, eh?”

He stood there, feeling the pride he drew from the picture. Knowing its secrets made him feel ineffably superior. None of the square Johns from the Hot Springs business community who frequented his soirees had an iota’s worth of knowledge about this thing. At $75,000 it had been cheap for that thrill alone.

“Houses at L’Estaque” she repeated. “Ain’t that a toot!”

It was too hot for gardening—it was darned near too hot for anything!—but Junie wasn’t the sort to be stopped by a little heat. So out she went, the baby huge inside her and kicking, her feelings a little woozy, but nevertheless determined.

Arkansas was not rose country. You couldn’t get a good rose, at least not here, on this flat plain with its half-buried tubes of homes and no clouds in the sky and the sun hammering down, somehow bleeding the day of color. She hadn’t even tried roses. She knew roses would fail in so much direct sunlight.

So she’d planted less aristocratic flowers in the little bed outside her hut on 5th Street in the Camp Chaffee vets village, a mix of hydrangeas, daisies, lilacs and lilies. Now some weeds had come into the garden and it was time to expunge them.

Of course she had no tools, and the dried earth was too hard to attack with a spoon, and so she rooted around and found a ghoulish Jap bayonet that Earl had brought home from the war. It had a long, black blade, a truly horrifying thing, but she put it out of her mind that it had once been used to kill men, and insisted to herself that it was only a tool. With its smooth sharpness, she could penetrate into the soil deeply, twist vigorously and uproot the ugly scruff weeds that had seemed to come up almost overnight.

It wasn’t a big job and wouldn’t have been beyond her in any circumstances except these, where the heat just pummeled her. But she worked onward, through her discomfort, through her sweat, and in an hour had culled most of them. But her back ached. And her feelings of wooziness suddenly increased.

So she sat back for just a second, wiped her brow, and gathered strength for the last few weeds.

Possibly a mistake. As soon as she did, she looked up. Life was livable as long as you simply concentrated on what was just ahead of you, and let your faith and your love steer you, and did your duty. That she knew.

But, looking up, she confronted a bigger picture: the rows and rows of Quonsets gleaming dully in the sun, lit up now and then with a wife’s attempt to brighten them (as she had) with flowers. The attempts were heroic and doomed. The huts were still government housing, with laundry on lines that ran between them, hardscrabble, almost grassless dirt that lay in the lots, dusty gravel streets.

Would they ever get out?

What about the boom? Would it ever reach them and take them somewhere? But not if Earl was dead in some horrid battle for nothing against gangsters.

Don’t think that, she warned herself. She had a deep belief in God, country and her husband, and would never allow herself any willing subversion. But later, more and more, evil thoughts had been creeping into her brain.

Is this it? Is this what I get? What about all the jobs that were supposed to open up after the war, the explosion in industry and finance, construction and communication? Shouldn’t it somehow be for the men who’d fought the hardest, like her Earl? Instead, is he going to throw his life away for nothing?

The man who was her husband was still a considerable mystery to her. He didn’t like to talk about the war or his past, but they deviled him savagely. He was a good man, an honest man, but he had a reservoir of melancholy deep inside him that would not come out. When he gets on his feet, she thought, it will be all better. But he was on his feet now, and what he loved best had nothing to do with her, but only with other men, some kind of mission, something that took him so far away not just in emotion but in distance. It would involve guns and killing. He loved her, she knew. She didn’t doubt it, not a bit of it. But the question remained: what good was that kind of love, because it wasn’t the love of somebody there, somebody to be depended on. It was love as an idea, not a messy reality, love from afar. He was still at war, in certain ways.

The baby kicked.

You stop it, you little thing, she ordered.