Nobody Said Amen (12 page)

After the meeting Burroughs had said, “I want to take you upstairs and show you the Shiloh Club. I want you to feel welcome here and meet the folks you’ll want to know who use the Club.” When they’d walked up the stairs he’d felt like he was back in Boulder, Colorado, at the Faculty Club. A busy comfortable bar, an inviting smorgasbord arranged before two large windows looking out across the town green, and the easy laughter and lilt of southern conversation, much of it from a table of women where the morning’s shopping was piled on an extra chair. Nice. The kind of a room Helen would have liked.

As they’d approached the bar, Willy Claybourne had pivoted, carrying two Bloody Marys. She had nearly run into him and jockeyed quickly to save the drinks from capsizing. He’d had a quick vision of blond hair and wide green eyes.

“Oh, I am so sorry! Did I spill some on you?”

He had assured the lively and lovely lady that all was well and he didn’t need repairs.

She’d grinned at him and said, “I was trying to help Sammy because the bar was so busy and so I—” She’d stopped, embarrassed. “I do go on. Forgive me. You probably want to get your own drink from Sammy. Hi, Mr. Mayor!”

Burroughs had laughed. “Hi, Willy. Before you mow any more men down, meet our new friend from Colorado. Richard Perkins. This is Shiloh’s one and only Wilson Claybourne.”

She’d cocked her head and smiled. “Hi. You are absolutely the only person I have ever met from Colorado. Did you ski to Shiloh?”

Before he could answer, Burroughs had said, “If those drinks aren’t for us, then you’d better get on to your table!” Willy had paused and given them a brazen look, up and down.

“I would have taken you two for bourbon and soda. Or maybe just bourbon. No, these are for Miss Emily and me. Nice to meet you, Richard Perkins.” He had watched her trim figure as she’d threaded her way to her table. And when the noon sun from the large windows caught the mop of blond curls, he—well, he could paint a picture. When he’d raised his bourbon to her across the crowded room, she had grinned and raised her glass in response.

Southern women. He never had figured them out. From the getgo, Willy was bewitching, knowing, teasing, feminine. What was it that made them different? Helen was a beautiful woman, sexy in her own way, but a little unattainable, not as aggressively female as a Willy Claybourne. More mysterious. But Willy gave him the impression she was attainable and reminded him that he was male every time he encountered her. From that first tangle with the Bloody Marys it was a given that they were going to know each other a lot better. The next weekend Luke Claybourne had invited him out to his plantation. He said his wife had told him Richard Perkins was new in town and he wanted to make him welcome. And Perkins knew he wanted to go.

NEFERTITI. The sign was tacked to the door, and caught their headlights when they came down the long winding road. Perkins pulled up alongside the line of dusty cars and trucks parked almost around the bungalow. He grinned at Luke and caught Willy’s smiling eyes in the mirror. “This has got to be it. Welcome to Fatback’s Platter, and songs by the Queen of the Nile, Nefertiti.” When they opened the car door, the beat of the music from the cabin was shaking the place. A cluster of blacks crowded the entrance and Willy’s hand tightened on Luke’s arm.

“Richard, you really think we can take Willy in that joint?” Luke asked. “Last time I went to a juke joint like that I was drunk and had the whole football team with me. Got out by the skin of my teeth.”

“Relax, Luke. I know a man who knows a man. Stay here with Willy till I call you.” He strode across the yard and reached out to shake hands with the huge man at the door. Over the music Bronko’s guttural voice was saying, “I told you niggers to stay back. You’ll get in when I say you’ll get in.” He and Perkins put their heads together, and then Perkins waved Luke and Willy to join him.

“Comin’ through,” Bronko said, moving into the crush with Willy, Luke and Perkins in his wake. Startled at the sudden intrusion of whites at Fatback’s, the crowd at the door grudgingly parted and the four stepped into the smoke and noise. As Bronko led them to a small table in the corner, dancers were leaving the crowded floor and a throaty singer’s voice seemed to hush the place.

Nefertiti, the pretty, buxom, glistening woman at the mike, was singing, her eyes closed and her expressive hands making little circles to match the lyrics. Dressed in a scarlet gown that plunged tantalizingly over well rounded breasts, with a cascade of glass necklaces catching and reflecting the funky light of the room, she commanded the scene. With every tilt of her expressive head, the long dangling earrings trembled in the half-light. The alto sax groaned a rhythmic background, and a sinuous snare gave a shivering, suggestive accompaniment to the music.

Whoever said a good man is hard to find

Positively absolutely sure was blind

I’ve found the best man there ever was

Here’s just some of the things that my man does. . . .

Laughter rolled like surf in the little room then subsided.

Why he shakes my ashes, greases my griddle,

Chimes my butter and he strokes my fiddle,

My man is such a handy man (oh, yes he is). . . .

Willy tilted her head to catch the words through the noisy merriment in the room.

He threads my needle, creams my wheat

Heats my heater and he chops my meat

My man is such a handy man.

Willy was laughing, her eyes bright, her hand tight on Luke’s arm. She caught Perkins’s broad smile as he ordered drinks for the table, and saw Luke frown, staring at the singer. “Oh, for God’s sake, Luke,” she protested. “Lighten up and have some fun.”

Luke’s eyes never left the woman at the mike. It really was her. How many years? Seventeen, maybe? He stirred uncomfortably in his chair. Long before I even met Willy . . . “Never-titty! Nefertiti! Jesus!” When he turned finally to Willy she was chuckling quietly as she followed the glistening singer. Verse after verse, the ribaldry built as Nefertiti grimaced and clucked, sharing the wicked fun of the words with every corner of Fatback’s Platter.

Yeah you know my ice don’t get a chance to melt away

Cause he sees that I get that fresh piece every day,

My man, my man is such a handy man . . .

Nefertiti’s eyes grew large as she suddenly spotted Luke. Fanning herself with her large lavender scarf, she wrapped up her patter. Then she pointed at Lucas, and the patrons howled. “I know that white man. And I ain’t kiddin’!” As the room roared its approval, Nefertiti blew kisses to the crowd and moved with surprising nimbleness to Perkins’s table, both hands extended to Luke. “My, God, it really is you. White Lightning!”

Willy turned to Luke with a wide smile, her eyebrows arched. “Introduce us to your friend, darling.” He was flushed with embarrassment as he rose to greet the woman, but could not contain a pleased smile.

“A long time, Nefertiti. Hell, a very long time.” As the voluptuous woman enthusiastically embraced him, Willy exchanged astonished glances with Perkins. “This is my wife, Willy, and my friend, Dick Perkins.” He clumsily extricated himself, but held the singer’s hand. “Willy, right after the war, Eula’s mother had a gentleman friend— Calvin—who used to come visit us at the plantation. He was a widower, and loved Josie’s company. He had a pretty, skinny little daughter he brought with him—this lady. And every time he came, Nefertiti and I were left to play together. I was about eight and you about six, Titi, first time you came.”

Nefertiti grinned and took Willy’s hands in her own. “I knew your man long before you did, Willy.” Mischievously she rolled her eyes and winked at Perkins. “We played a lot together!”

Reddening, Luke looked sideways at Willy, struggling to find a way ahead in the conversation. “Last time I saw Titi,” he mumbled, “I was fifteen.”

“A large fifteen, Willy! I mean a tall fifteen!” She shook with laughter and squeezed Luke’s hand.

Shaking his head, Luke waved to the waiter. “We could use a drink for the lady,” he said, and everyone laughed.

“It took you a long time to get there, White Lightning. You used to be a whole lot faster!” She smiled at his discomfiture and placed a wet kiss on his cheek.

Perkins rose from the table, “C’mon, Willy, let’s you and me let these folks reminisce. The music’s too good to waste.” He tugged her to the crowded dance floor. “Willy,” he murmured. “Stop lookin’ like that. You never played doctor when you were eight?”

She leaned back in his arms, and smiled at him. “How’d you know that, way out in Colorado?”

How clearly Luke remembered! The girl that had come with Calvin was fun! Right from the start, Nefertiti was pissy as hell, game for anything, a tomboy, and full of laughter. She looked more like a boy than a girl, he’d been glad to see. It was lonely during the summer, nobody much around, and he’d welcomed her company. His daddy was always way out in the fields, checking the pickers in the surplus GI jeep he’d bought when he returned from the war. There was nobody to hunt turtles with down in the hollow, nobody to fish for the catfish that were always there in the lower-40 pond, nobody for nothing. Damn near made him wish it was school time again. Then Nefertiti had showed up.

The first time he took her to the hollow for turtles, she tripped on a trailing vine from the willow and fell face down in the muddy water. When she rose, her face was so caked with mud that he burst out laughing. “You look like a nigger!”

“Well, what you think I is?” She’d scraped off the mud, then looked right at him. “I’s a nigger.” Then she’d made a comic face and giggled. “You fall in that nasty water and you looks like a nigger, too!”

“Didn’t mean nothing by it,” he said, feeling sort of bad. That afternoon they got three turtles while the Delta sun was baking the mud on their soaking clothes. “Gonna take off these nastys,” she’d said and pulled off the T-shirt, shorts and underwear. At the little overflow stream from the pool she squatted in the water and washed the mud away. When she stretched out to dry in the sun, Luke pulled off his shorts and washed himself at the pool.

“Watch out for the biting flies,” he said, lying down beside her. “They leave real big welts. Daddy says they can make you sick.” He rolled on his side, his head only inches away from the girl. “Where’d you get a name like Nefertiti? Don’t sound like a nigger name I ever heard of.”

“Papa says mama named me. She thought I was beautiful like the Queen of the Nile, papa said. That’s who Nefertiti was. Don’t much remember mama. She passed when I was three and a half. I remember her skin, real light. I loved it. Not dark like mine and papa’s.” She sat up, staring at Luke’s body. “You got funny colors, light pink around your middle and dark brown on top. Sun doesn’t make that much difference on me. I never saw a white boy’s pecker before. Ain’t very big.” She rolled on to her back, her eyes closed against the sun.

Luke said angrily, “It’s big enough. They get bigger when you’re older.” He grinned. “You ain’t even got a small one. You look like a boy, no titties at all.”

“You gets titties when you older, papa told me. I ain’t no boy. I’m Nefertiti, Queen of the Nile!” Then she hooted with laughter. “And you ain’t!”

“And you ain’t Nefertiti, neither. Your name is Never-Titty!” The two of them started to laugh at his great joke when they heard the call from the house. “Nefertiti! Time to go home!”

Luke whispered, “Y’hear that? Never-Titty, time to go home!”

Giggling, she’d slapped him and pulled on her clothes. “Daddy never said that. You bad, Lucas.”

Nefertiti lit a cigarette and settled back in her chair, appraising Luke. “You ever learn to use these, Lightnin’? Rememberin’ your old man, I’d bet no.”

“Daddy would have beat my bottom then. You remember him, huh?” She still looked so damn fine. Little Titi. . . . oh, man. “It was all so simple then.”

Nefertiti nodded, a tear streaking her mascara. “And sweet, Lucas. So sweet.” Her gaze moved to the dance floor. “And Willy McIntire turned out like that!”

Dressed in a soft green floral linen that billowed as she turned, revealing long, tan legs, Willy moved effortlessly in Perkins’s arms. Her eyes were closed and her head was back, light catching her blonde hair. Nefertiti nodded and smiled. “Well, you always liked beautiful women. Girls, anyway. Leastwise till you went to Shiloh High and you lost my address.”

“Don’t shit a shitter, Titi. It was you that moved away to Biloxi with your father.”

“Yeah. That’s so. But the day you went off to high school I knew our playtime was over. And so did you.”

He blew his nose hard in his handkerchief. “Must be all the smoke in the room,” he muttered. It was sweet. He could see her still. It was never that simple sweet again. Damn smoke was getting in his eyes.

Richard Perkins and Willy had stepped back, watching the dancers grooving on a go-for-broke “Take the A Train.” The unrestrained joy on the floor was infectious. “You game?” Richard shed his jacket, pulled down his tie, and held out his arms.

“No. But what the hell,” Willy said.

Laughing, he swept her back out into the melee. She was still youthfully slender even in her pregnancy. Perkins brought her tight against him, then swung the surprised Willy out to the length of his arm as he found the beat and started to lindy.

Her lips parted and her eyes flashed as she discovered the passionate side of Dick Perkins. Lord! Oh, yes! Not like dancing before the long mirror when Luke was down in New Orleans, wishing . . . for what? She surrendered to the Ellington music, melding body to body. My God, I’d nearly forgotten. Wonderful! The crowded dance floor seemed to become a stage for the couple. The other dancers edged away and a rhythmic clapping started and didn’t stop till “A Train” surrendered in a long wail by the sax. Still in his embrace, Willy took a deep breath, then slowly eased him away. “Well, Richard Perkins,” she breathed. “You are full of surprises.”