Loving Women (35 page)

“Try to behave yourselves,” Bobby Bolden said. “You in a civilized neighborhood now.”

“ ‘The sun shines east, the sun shines west—’ ”

“Sal, you better shut yo mouf, boss,” Bolden said, sounding like Rochester from
The Jack Benny Show
.

I realized then that Bolden was dressed entirely in black: shiny black shirt, black tapered trousers, high black shiny boots. He looked as if he’d painted himself in silhouette. The eyes seemed greener. He glanced behind us at the road, as if expecting someone. All he saw were a couple of black kids staring without visible emotion at the visiting white men. Then he led the way to the front door and knocked: one-two, one-two-three. Footsteps. Bolden said, “It’s me.” Two locks were turned and then Bobby Bolden’s white woman was framed in the light. I couldn’t see her face. She hugged Bolden warmly and then he casually introduced her as Catty Wolverton. She shook my hand, then stepped aside to let us in. She locked the door behind us.

“Ugliest group a strays I ever seen,” she said.

“Saved them from a vagrancy arrest,” Bolden said.

Catty was about twenty-five, with brown liquid eyes and a red-dish tint in her hair. She had a short pert nose and an overbite that stopped just short of bucked teeth. Some people might think she was homely. But she had a dark smoky voice and heavy breasts above a narrow waist and a drowsy manner and a dirty laugh and I thought:
Yeah, I see
.

“Help yourself to the booze, guys,” she said, and waved us toward some bottles, glasses and an ice bucket perched on top of a nearly empty bookcase. She went back to the stove. Inside, the house was very bright and clean, the walls painted white, but it was essentially one very large room that felt as if someone had just moved in or moved out.

A bed was shoved up against the far wall, with a braided rug beside it on the plank floor, flanked by two unmatched pinewood bureaus, and on one of them there was a phonograph and a stack of records. The kitchen was larger than the sleeping area; a wide round table was placed in the middle, covered with a red plastic tablecloth and set with dishes and silverware, and there was a new
gas stove that contrasted with the plainness of the room. A small refrigerator huddled beside the range and next to it was a stainless-steel sink. There were no pictures on the walls and no flowers.
He will smell lilac and begonias and myrtle. He will stare out at the dark lake. He will hear insects droning on the River Styx
. Sal poured Jim Beam bourbon into three glasses, added ice, handed them to Max and me.

“So what are you three jackoffs up to?” Catty said, stirring something in a black iron pot. Smelled like gumbo.

“Chastity,” Sal said. “Only thing that works every time.”

“Not for Jews,” Max said. “Go ye forth and multiply, saith the Lord.”

Catty laughed in a dirty way and stirred the pot, then built a drink for herself and Bobby Bolden.

“Hell, chastity don’t work for
anybody
,” Catty said.

Bobby stacked some records on the record player and a man with a deep throaty growl began to sing:

Keep your eyes off my lovin woman
,

Keep your eyes off that lovin woman
,

Stay away from that sweet lovin woman
,

’Cause that sweet little lovin woman
,

 … She belongs to me.…

Catty hummed along with the chorus, talking about the Navy and being stationed at Mainside (touching the small of Bobby’s back) and her stupid son of a bitch of a chief yeoman (pinching his neck) and how as bad as he was, he wasn’t as bad as that total butternut muffdiver out at Ellyson, Chief McDaid. She knew McDaid from Dago, she said. Son of a whoremaster (she said, brushing Bobby’s ass). Then she picked up the bowls from the table and went to the stove and ladled out the gumbo.
Why lie to me, woman? Why say you’re working when you’re not? Hey, you got to reap just what you sow
.… The Boulder rose and expanded and then I was sipping the gumbo, made with chicken and vegetables, and it was good but not as good as the first gumbo I’d ever had, down the road, under the live oaks, facing the lake. Then as quickly as it had arrived, The Boulder began to fade.

“Great,” Sal said. “The best. Redneck minestrone.”

“I figured I shouldn’t give you pussyhunters anything
too
solid,” Catty said. “Ruin your routine.”

“Is this chicken kosher?” Max said.

“Is Chief McDaid?” Bobby Bolden said.

“That cunt,” Sal said. That was the first time I’d ever heard any man use the word in front of a woman, but Catty didn’t react the way I thought she would.

“Sal,” she said, “please don’t demean a perfectly beautiful piece of human anatomy by using it to describe that prick McDaid.”

“You mean that cunt is a
prick
?”

“You ofays sure talk dirty,” said Bobby Bolden.

“This is strictly a discussion of nomenclature, Bobby,” Sal said. “Catty says a cunt is a beautiful thing and obviously I agree. Nothing has brought me greater happiness in this vale of tears. But then she implies that
a prick
is bad and dirty. So I say, if you can’t call McDaid a cunt then you can’t call him a prick either.”

“Is he circumcised?” Max said.

“Only from the ears up,” Catty said, and slammed the table. The bowls of gumbo all bounced.

Sal turned to me and said, “Welcome to the Pensacola chapter of the Holy Name Society.”

Bobby fixed himself another drink and Max went to the stove for more gumbo and the blues man sang again about his lovin woman. There was no inside bathroom. A rotting outhouse stood in the woods behind the building but it looked so bad that the first time we all had to piss we just stood on the back porch and let go.

“Ooooh, wow,” Sal said. “This gotta be the closest man can ever get to God.”

“Do it downwind, will ya, wop?” Bobby Bolden said.

“Mine aint big enough to feel the wind,” Sal said. “Where’s downwind?”

“Toward me,” Max said, “so aim for the tomatoes.”

“
Aaaaaahhhhhh
,” Sal said, shook himself vigorously, and zipped up.

The moon was out now, and through the trees we could see its silvery reflection on the lake.

“God, it’s beautiful,” Sal whispered.

“It sure is,” I agreed.

“Twenty years from now, we’ll all be old men and there’ll be houses and supermarkets on the lake and a bunch of assholes flyin around in speedboats,” Max said. “And we’ll remember this night.”

“They’ll pave the road,” Sal said.

“They’ll get rid of the niggers.” Bobby Bolden laughed.

“They ain’t gonna wait twenty years for
that
.”

“They’ll have to bring guns,” Bobby Bolden said.

“They will,” Max said.

“They got them,” Sal said.

“So do we,” Bobby Bolden murmured. “So do we.”

Back inside, we drank some more and took turns dancing with Catty and played more records. Catty wanted to know why I was so quiet and I said it was because I was so full of good food and Sal said, no, it wasn’t that, it was because I was in love, and then he shifted to a Stan Laurel voice and said, “You can tell by the silly sloppy grin on his face.” And I laughed and wondered if he could really tell from my face. I poured another drink.

Then there was a sharp single knock on the door.

We all stopped talking and Bobby Bolden put his hand up to quiet us, reached under the bed and came up with a big .45 caliber automatic. His face completely changed. The looseness turned hard. The green eyes were wary. He tiptoed to the door, motioning all of us to get down low and away from the windows. Sal picked up a carving knife.

Then Bobby positioned himself to the side of the door, the gun ready. I put myself in front of Catty, crouched down near the sink. Max picked up a chair. My heart was pounding.

Bobby Bolden unlocked the lock, then flicked off the lights, squatted and jerked open the door.

There was nobody there.

We hurried through the woods and saw nobody and checked the car engine for bombs and went down to the edge of the lake to see if there were any boats speeding away in the moonlight. Whoever had knocked on the door was gone. But when it was time for Bobby to go back with us to the base, he wouldn’t let Catty stay alone at the house. “
Some
mothafucka was out there,” he said. “Maybe a kid. Maybe someone playin trickster. But maybe somebody else, too.” So he locked up the house and we all crowded into the Mercury. He’d drop us off at the locker club, take Catty on to Mainside, where she could stay in the bachelor women’s quarters. “Just can’t take no chances.”

For a moment, I thought maybe Bolden was putting us on, that
he’d arranged for someone to knock on the door, just to let us know that he had the gun and was ready to use it. And to show off for his white woman. But that didn’t make any sense; wouldn’t he rather spend the night with Catty Wolverton? The whole thing felt unreal. What
was
real was the gun. Bolden slipped it under the front seat. I asked him what he’d do if the cops stopped us and found the gun and he said he’d tell them it was Sal’s. “They believe anything about a wop,” he said. Sal said, “Except that he had a gun in a car with a spade and didn’t
use
it on him.” Catty giggled. We pulled out onto the gravel road. Max said, “Hey, we never had dessert.”

Bobby drove quickly past the silver trailer, throwing up gravel. And when I looked, the world tilted. Eden’s car was gone.

Bolden dropped us in front of Billy’s and drove on to Mainside. I suggested a nightcap. Sal said, “Why not?”

There were about a dozen men in the place being tended by a middle-aged blond barmaid. Seated on a stool in his dress whites was Red Cannon. McDaid was gone. Cannon’s head turned when we came in, but his body didn’t move. He stared at us, but we ignored him, laid our dollars on the bar and ordered beers.

“Jesus Christ, that was spooky,” Sal said, turning his back to Red Cannon. “Someone knockin’ on the door like that.”

“The guy’s nuts,” Max said.

“She’s worse,” I said. “The
blacks
could do her in, the
rednecks
could—”

“What you say, boy?”

I turned and looked at Red Cannon. He was very drunk, but holding himself still.

“You call me a redneck?” he said in a surly way.

“I didn’t say anything about you,” I said.

“I heard you say redneck, boy.”

“He wasn’t talking
about
you,” Sal said, “or
to
you. So cool it, Red.”

“Don’t tell
me
to cool it, sailor,” Cannon said, sliding off the stool. The barmaid moved down to him. She didn’t say anything, just touched his hand and stared. He turned to her. And never said another word.

“She must be a fuckin hypnotist,” Max murmured.

“I hope she makes him forget our names,” Sal said.

“He never knew them,” I said. “All he knows is our numbers.”

“That’s all he needs.”

Then Sal started doing his version of Senator Claghorn. If Cannon was going to listen to our conversations, Sal was going to give him something to hear. “Well, FRANKLY, I think the future of NATO is a question of STRATEGIC priorities. The Mediterranean must be CONVERTED into an AMERICAN LAKE. We can’t allow the damn RUSSIANS to THREATEN OUR NATIONAL SECURITY!”

“No doubt about it,” Max said.

“Make no MISTAKE! They are out for WORLD DOMINATION! They plan to CONQUER AMERICA and CLOSE THE BAPTIST CHURCHES! They will come in and make MISCEGE-NATION THE LAW OF THE LAND! Turn us into a NATION OF HALF-BREEDS! They will let the COLORED RACES go to school! There’ll be NIGGERS IN THE ORCHESTRA OF THE REX THEATER! Mark my words!”

Max rolled his eyes at me. Red Cannon stared at the bottles behind the bar, then stood up, holding himself very erect, and with a kind of wordless dignity walked straight to the door and went out. We all got very drunk. At closing time we slipped through the back fence onto the base. We found Maher on duty at the dumpster. He was drunk, too.

Chapter

38

O
h, child, she said, what’d you let get in your head? I took the damned
bike
to work. When I come home last night, I needed to pick up some groceries; couldn’t do that riding the bike, could I? So I took the car. Went all the way back down the road to Sham’s and got some fresh milk and some bread for breakfast. Simple as that. You can’t let that
crazy
stuff get in your head. You won’t get me
close
to you that way, child. Just drive me off.

I’m sorry, I said.

Don’t you be saying you’re
sorry
, hear me? Just don’t let some devil eat your brain. You’re here
now
, with
me
, on a Thursday night in 1953. This ain’t some damn movie. This is
us
. This is
here
. We got
this
. You and me. I never thought I’d have this and here it is. And we don’t need to have evil stuff eating up brains. Not your brains. Not mine.