Sailor & Lula (11 page)

“This ain't news, sweetheart. I hate to tell ya.”

Johnnie chewed his trout slowly and carefully. He was listening to Marietta while trying to avoid swallowing the bones.

“She's all I have, Johnnie. If I didn't go after Lula now, I'd never forgive myself.”

“I understand how you feel, Marietta, it's just I can't see you're helpin' matters. Lula ain't a baby, she got a mind of her own. There comes a point you gotta let go.”

Marietta put down her knife and fork, sat back in her chair and stared hard at Johnnie.

“You sound like some textbook on child rearin',” she said, “which is interestin', considerin' you never raised no children.”

They sat in silence throughout the rest of their meal, and Marietta paid the check with cash, since Galatoire's did not accept credit cards.

Once they were outside on Bourbon Street, Johnnie said, “You want to spend the night in town or get on the road? Either way's solid with me.”

“I can sleep in the car,” said Marietta. “Let's head for Houston and see if we can pick up the trail.”

Marietta settled back in the front passenger seat of Johnnie's 1987 candy-apple-red Cadillac Seville. She closed her eyes and thought about what Dalceda Delahoussaye had said about Clyde's coming to her with his worry over Marietta's nervous nature. She'd done a good job, she thought, raising Lula. This situation with the Ripley boy was just a freak occurrence, something Marietta knew she could talk Lula out of face-to-face. She prayed that Lula wasn't pregnant again.

As soon as Johnnie was certain that Marietta had fallen asleep, he rolled down his window partway and lit up a Hoyo. He had committed himself to her, so he'd stick with the chase, but he didn't like the feel of it now. He had a foreboding about the whole deal. Johnnie kept the Cadillac at a steady seventy-five. Marietta's head was tilted back and to the side away from him. Her mouth was half open and her chest was rising and falling in a regular rhythm. He turned on the radio, keeping the sound low.

“Finally, a sad item in the sports news,” said the radio. “Eligio Sardinias, a leading boxer in the 1930s who fought under the name Kid Chocolate, died today in Havana, the Cuban state radio reported. He was seventy-eight years old. The Cuban-born boxer was elected to the Boxing Hall of Fame in 1959. As Kid Chocolate, he won the world junior lightweight title in 1931, and followed that up by winning the New York featherweight title, then considered a major championship, in 1932, by beating Lew Feldman with a twelfth-round knockout. He fought for the world featherweight title in 1930, losing a fifteen-round decision to Battling Battalino. The next year he lost a bid for the world lightweight title against Tony Canzoneri, also in a fifteen-round decision. Kid Chocolate's professional record was a hundred thirty-two wins, ten losses and six draws, with fifty KOs.”

Lew Feldman, thought Johnnie, must have been a Jewish fighter. There were lots of them in the old days. Barney Ross, of course, and Benny Leonard, both champions. Many who fought under Irish or Italian names. Maybe there was a story in this, Johnnie thought. A Jewish kid, just off the boat before the war, goes into the army, where he learns how to box from an old sergeant whose own pro career was cut short due to an injury. The kid takes the sergeant's name, Jack O'Leary. He fights his way close to the top, only to be prevented from getting a shot at the title by an anti-Semitic promoter who finds out the kid's a Jew.

The kid can win the title and the promoter knows it. The only way he'll let the kid in the ring, however, is if the kid agrees to take a dive so the promoter and his mob cronies can make a bundle betting against him. A real 1940s-style melodrama, Johnnie thought. Sergeant O'Leary is on his deathbed, wounded and dying. He gets wind of the tank job and sends word to the kid before the fight to win the title for him, to not disgrace the name Jack O'Leary. John Garfield could have played the kid in the movie, with Harry Carey as the sergeant, Eduardo Ciannelli as the crooked promoter, Arthur Kennedy as the kid's manager-trainer, Juano Hernandez as the corner man, and Priscilla Lane as the girlfriend.

Johnnie ran the movie over and over in his mind as he drove, rein-venting the scenes. The title would be
Don't Die for Me.
Nothing in real life, thought Johnnie, ever seemed quite as honest as this.

In San Antonio, Lula said, “You know about the Alamo?”

“Talked about it in school, I remember,” said Sailor. “And I seen the old John Wayne movie where mostly nothin' happens till the Mexicans overrun the place.”

Sailor and Lula were in La Estrella Negra eating birria con arroz y frijoles and drinking Tecate with wedges of lime.

“Guess it's a pretty big deal here,” said Lula. “Noticed drivin' in how ever'thing's named after it. Alamo Road, Alamo Street, Alamo Square, Alamo Buildin', Hotel Alamo. They ain't forgettin' it in a hurry.”

“Pretty place, though, San Antone,” said Sailor.

“So what we gonna do, hon? About money, I mean.”

“I ain't worried. Figure we'll stop somewhere between here and El Paso and find some work.”

“When you was a boy?”

“Uh huh.”

“What'd you think about doin' when you grew up?”

“Pilot. Always wanted to be a airline pilot.”

“Like for TWA or Delta, you mean?”

“Yeah. Thought that'd be cool, you know, wearin' a captain's hat and takin' them big birds up over the ocean. Hang out with stews in Rome and L.A.”

“Why didn't you do it?”

Sailor laughed. “Never really got the chance, did I? Wasn't nobody about to help me toward it, you know? Not bein' much of a student, always gettin' in trouble one way or another, I kinda lost sight of it.”

“You coulda joined the air force, learned to fly.”

“Tried once. They didn't want me 'cause of my record. Too many scrapes. I never even been in a plane.”

“Shoot, Sail, we oughta take a long flight when we got some money to waste. Fly to Paris.”

“I'd go for that.”

As soon as they'd finished eating, Sailor said, “Let's keep movin', Lula. Big towns is where they'll look.”

Sailor drove with Lula curled up on the seat next to him. Patsy Cline was on the radio, singing “I Fall to Pieces.”

“I wish I'd been born when Patsy Cline was singin',” said Lula.

“What's the difference?” Sailor asked. “You can still listen to her records.”

“I coulda seen her maybe. She got the biggest voice? Like if Aretha Franklin woulda been a country singer all those years ago. That's what I always wanted to do, Sailor, be a singer. I ever tell you that?”

“Not that I recall.”

“When I was little, eight or nine? Mama took me to Charlotte and put me in a talent show. It was at a big movie theater, and there was all these kids lined up on the stage. Each of us had to perform when our name was called. Kids tap-danced, played instruments or sang, mostly. One boy did magic tricks. Another boy juggled balls and stood on his head while he whistled ‘Dixie' or somethin'.”

“What'd you do?”

“Sang ‘Stand By Your Man,' the Tammy Wynette tune? Mama thought it'd be extra cute, havin' me sing such a grown-up number.”

“How'd it go?”

“Not too bad. Course I couldn't hit most of the high notes, and all the other kids on stage was talkin' and makin' noises durin' my turn.”

“You win?”

“No. Some boy played ‘Stars Fell on Alabama' on a harmonica did.”

“Why'd you quit singin'?”

“Mama decided I didn't have no talent. Said she didn't wanta waste no more money on lessons. This was when I was thirteen? Prob'ly she was right. No sense playin' at it. You got a voice like Patsy's, you ain't got no hesitation about where you're headed.”

“Ain't easy when you're kinda in the middle of things,” said Sailor.

“Like us, you mean,” said Lula. “That's where we are, and I don't mean in the middle of southwest Texas.”

“There's worse places.”

“If you say so, honey.”

“Trust me on it.”

“I do trust you, Sailor. Like I ain't never trusted nobody before. It's scary sometimes. You ain't got much maybe or might in you.”

Sailor laughed, and put his arm over Lula, brushing her cheek with his hand.

“Maybe and might are my little brothers,” he said. “I gotta set 'em a good example, is all.”

“It ain't really them worries me, it's those cousins, never and ever, make me shake.”

“We'll be all right, peanut, long as we got room to move.”

Lula clucked her tongue twice.

“Know what?” she said.

“Uh?”

“I don't know that I completely enjoy you callin' me peanut so much.”

Sailor laughed. “Why's that?”

“Puts me so far down on the food chain?”

Sailor looked at her.

“Really, Sail. I know how you mean it to be sweet, but I was thinkin' how everything can eat a peanut and a peanut don't eat nothin'. Makes me sound so tiny, is all.”

“How you want, honey,” he said.

Big Tuna, Texas, pop. 305, sits 125 miles west of Biarritz, 125 miles east of Iraaq, and 100 miles north of the Mexican border on the south fork of the Esperanza trickle. Sailor cruised the Bonneville through the streets of Big Tuna, eyeballing the place.

“This looks like a lucky spot, sweetheart,” he said. “Whattaya think?”

“Not bad,” said Lula. “Long as you're not large on cool breezes. Must be a hundred and ten and it ain't even noon yet.”

“Hundred twelve, to be exact. What it said on the Iguana County Bank buildin' back there. And that's prob'ly two degrees or more shy of the actual temp. Chamber of commerce don't like to discourage visitors, so they set it low.”

“I can understand that, Sail. After all, there's a big difference between a hundred twelve and a hundred fourteen.”

Sailor circled back and stopped the car in front of the Iguana Hotel, a two-story, whitewashed wooden building with the Texas state flag draped over the single porch above the entrance.

“This'll do,” he said.

The second-floor room Sailor and Lula rented was simple: double bed, dresser, mirror, chair, sink, toilet, bathtub (no shower), electric fan, window overlooking the street.

“Not bad for eleven dollars a day,” said Sailor.

“No radio or TV,” said Lula. She stripped off the spread, tossed it in a corner and sat down on the bed. “And no AC.”

“Fan works.”

“Now what?”

“Let's go down to the drugstore and get a sandwich. Find out about where to look for work.”

“Sailor?”

“Yeah?”

“This ain't exactly my most thrillin' notion of startin' a new life.”

They ordered bologna and American cheese on white with Cokes at the counter of Bottomley's Drug.

“Pretty empty today,” Sailor said to the waitress, whose plastic name tag had KATY printed on it.

“Ever'body's over to the funeral,” Katy said. “This is kind of a sad day around here.”

“We just got into town,” said Lula. “What happened?”

“Buzz Dokes, who run a farm here for twenty years, died somethin' horrible. Only forty-four.”

“How'd he go?” asked Sailor.

“Bumblebees got him. Buzz was on his tractor Monday mornin' when a swarm of bees lit on his head and knocked him off his seat. He fell underneath the mower and the blades chopped him up in four unequal parts. Run over a bee mound and they just rose up and attacked him. Poor Buzz. Tractor trampled him and kept goin', went through a fence and smacked into the side of a Messican's house. Took it clean off the foundation.”

“That's about the most unpleasant incident I heard of lately,” said Lula.

“There's always some strange thing or other happenin' in Big Tuna,” Katy said. “I've lived here all my life, forty-one years, except for two years in Beaumont, and I could put together some book about this town. It wouldn't all be pretty, I tell you. But it's a sight better than bein' in a place like Beaumont, where people come down the street you don't know 'em and never will. I like bein' in a place where I know who I'm gonna see every day. What are you kids doin' here?”

“Lookin' for work,” said Sailor.

“Any kind in particular?”

“I'm pretty fair with cars, trucks. Never done no ranchin', though, or farmin'.”

“You might talk to Red Lynch. He's got a garage just two blocks up the street here, 'cross from the high school. Called Red's. He might have somethin', seein' as how the boys he usually hires don't last too long before they take off for Dallas or Houston. Not enough goin' on to keep 'em here. Red oughta be back from Buzz's funeral in a half hour or so.”

“Thanks, Katy, I'll check it out. Tell me, why's this town named Big Tuna? There ain't no body of water around here woulda ever had no tuna in it.”

Katy laughed. “That's for sure. All we got's wells and what falls from the sky, which ain't been a whole heck of a lot lately. The Esperanza's dry half the year. No, it's named after an oilman, Earl ‘Big Tuna' Bink, who bought up most of Iguana County back in the twenties. Used to be called Esperanza Spring, only there ain't no spring, just like there ain't no tuna. Bink'd go off on fishin' trips to California, Hawaii and Australia and such, and have these big mounted fish shipped back here to his ranch. He died when I was ten. The whole county went to his funeral. Ever'body called him Big Tuna. There's a oil portrait of him hangin' in the Iguana County Bank, which he owned. Where you-all from?”