Sailor & Lula (3 page)

“I'll locate Lula, Marietta, and if she's with the Ripley boy I'll give him a talkin'-to and try to convince her to come back with me. That's about all I can do.” He took a long swallow from the tumbler.

Marietta began to cry. She blubbered for a few seconds and then stopped as abruptly as she'd started. Her grey eyes glazed over and turned slightly purple.

“Then I'll hire a hit man,” she said. “If you won't help me, I'll call Marcello Santos. He and Clyde were always close.”

“Now, Marietta, I
am
goin' to help you. And don't be gettin' carried away. You don't want to be bringin' Santos and his people into it. Besides, he and Clyde weren't gettin' along so well there toward the end.”

“It was the lead paint killed Clyde, Johnnie, not Marcello. You know
that. And anyway, Marcello Santos has been sweet on me from before I married Clyde. My mama didn't want me to have nothin' to do with him, so I just always kept it polite. Prob'ly I shouldn'ta listened to her. Look at Lula.
She
don't pay me no nevermind.”

“Times is different now, Marietta.”

“Manners ain't. Might be kids nowadays got it on their mind the world could blow up any second, but seems hardly any of 'em care or know how to act proper anymore.”

“I've noticed,” said Johnnie. He took a big sip of scotch, leaned all the way back in Clyde Fortune's old Niagara chair, and closed his eyes.

“Lula included,” Marietta said. “And mostly it's my own fault. After Clyde died, I tended to indulge Lula more'n I should have, I suppose.”

“Yours was not an uncommon reaction, Marietta.”

“I understand that, but this obsession she has with this murderer I
don't
understand.”

Johnnie belched softly and opened his eyes.

“He ain't a murderer. You got to get off that kick,” said Johnnie. “And far's I can tell Sailor was entire clean prior to that event involved Lula. Even there he was protectin' her. Just got too forceful is all.”

“Maybe I oughta take a trip, Johnnie. Go to Cairo or Spain or Singapore on one of them tours the Diners Club is always sendin' me brochures about. Think Lula'd go with me?”

“I believe you'd best take things one step at a time, Marietta.”

“I used to like the heat, Sailor, I really did,” said Lula. “But right now I don't care how good it is for my skin. I could use a cool breeze.”

Sailor Ripley and Lula Pace Fortune were sitting next to each other in lawn chairs on the porch of the Cape Fear Hotel. It was early evening but the temperature was still in the nineties, down from the high of a hundred and six that had been reached at just past three o'clock in the afternoon.

“Who told you that the heat does anything good for skin?” asked Sailor.

“Magazines, honey. The ones for women? Like you get in the Winn-Dixie by the checkout.”

Lula was wearing her yellow one-piece and Sailor was naked except for his blue boxer shorts with white polka dots on them. She stroked his arm nearest her, the left.

“You've got beautiful skin, Sailor. It's so smooth. I just love to trace my fingertips down your arm or back without thinkin', you know? It reminds me of a skier slidin' through perfect white snow.”

“It's 'cause I don't go out in no hot sun,” said Sailor. “I don't get fried up like you.”

“Oh, I know,” Lula said. “There's lots of articles now about how many people, kids even, are gettin' skin cancer? 'Cause the ozone layer is disappearin'. Seems to me the government could do somethin' about it.”

“How's that?” asked Sailor.

“Keepin' us separated from outer space and all,” said Lula. “One of these mornin's the sun'll come up and burn a hole clean through the planet like a X ray.”

Sailor laughed. “That ain't never will happen, honey,” he said. “Least not in our lifetime.”

“It's the future I'm thinkin' of, Sailor. What if we have children and they have children? You mean you wouldn't be upset if some big ol' fireball loosed itself on your grandkids?”

“Peanut, by that time they'll be drivin' Buicks to the moon.”

Lula stared out at the water. Now that the sun had completely gone, a beacon from the Cape Fear River pilot's tower, which was a hundred yards or so south of the hotel, lit up a path along the channel. Neither Sailor nor Lula spoke for several minutes. Down the row on another porch a woman laughed. It was a kind of wild, crazy laugh, and for the few seconds it lasted Lula squeezed Sailor's arm as tightly as she could.

“You okay, honey?” Sailor asked, rubbing his arm where she'd squeezed it.

“I guess so,” she said. “I'm sorry I grabbed you so hard but that woman's laugh creeped me out. It sounded like a hyena or somethin', didn't it?”

“Never heard one,” said Sailor.

“Oh, you know, like on the
National Geographic
TV?”

“Just sounded like an old gal havin' a good time to me.”

“Of all the movie stars?” Lula said. “Susan Hayward had the best laugh. She was all throaty and husky soundin'. You ever see that old picture on the late movie she was the woman went to the electric chair or the gas chamber, I forget which?”

“Nope,” said Sailor.

“She was married to this dope addict who beat her up? And she was friends with these robbers and there's a killin' and she's mostly innocent but she ends up with the death sentence anyway. Well, she got to laugh a lot in that one.”

“Until they croaked her,” Sailor said.

Lula nodded. “Uh huh. But Miss Susan Hayward didn't get cheated on her laugh.”

“You hungry yet?” Sailor asked.

“I could eat, probably,” said Lula. “But I need me a kiss first, honey. Just one?”

Lula put on her favorite pink shortie nightgown and snuggled up next to Sailor, who was lying on his stomach with only his undershorts on watching
The Dating Game
on the television.

“What you want to watch this silliness for?” Lula asked. “Ain't one of those people have a real thought in their brain.”

“That so?” said Sailor. He kept his gaze on the TV. “You want to tell me what if any real thoughts you had lately?”

“What you have to get personal about so quick?” said Lula. “All I mean is you could possibly read a book or somethin'. I hate the way people look and act on TV? They're like puffed-up dolls? And sick lookin', especially in color. People are better off in black-and-white.”

Sailor grunted.

“What's that, honey?” said Lula.

“We didn't have no TV up at Pee Dee, baby, you know? They don't make no special A-number-one effort to keep county farm inmates entertained. You kind of have to make do with what you got.”

Lula slid her head up and kissed Sailor on the cheek. “I'm sorry, sweetie,” she said. “I forget some moments where-all you been the last two years.”

“Twenty-three months, eighteen days is all,” Sailor said. “Don't need to make more of it than it was.”

“While you were away?” said Lula. “Mama insisted on throwin' this dinner party for the Armisteads, some acquaintances of hers from Mississippi. They'd drove up to deliver their daughter, Drusilla, to the college? Sue and Bobby Breckenridge was there also, and Bobby's mother, Alma. Alma must be eighty-six or eighty-seven years old now? She just sat in a corner chair and didn't move or say a syllable. She must be deaf because she never reacted to anythin' anybody said all evenin'. You listenin', Sailor?”

“I been trained to do more'n one thing at a time, peanut, you know that.”

“Just checkin', so I know I ain't talkin' for no good reason. Well, Eddie
Armistead is just one very tall anteater of a man? Runs a drugstore in Oxford, where he was born and raised. And Mama has all these books by William Faulkner, you know, the writer? Paul Newman was in a old movie of one of 'em? And Lee Remick when she was so young and beautiful? Now she's old and beautiful, of course. So Mama went to visit William Faulkner's house once in Oxford, 'cause it's a museum now I guess, and wound up meetin' the Armisteads.”

“What about the wife?” asked Sailor.

“Mrs. Armistead?” said Lula. “Oh, well, she didn't say very much. Elvie, I think that's her name? The anteater did all the talkin'. He said stuff like when he was a boy Mister Bill—that's what he called William Faulkner?—would scold him for runnin' through the tulip beds of his plantation. Rowan Oak, I think it's named. ‘You must run around the flowers, Eddie,' the anteater said William Faulkner told him. ‘Yes, sir, Mister Bill,' the anteater said he'd say, before runnin' off over William Faulkner's tulip beds again. For some reason my mama thought this was someway humorous.

“Anyway, Sailor, what I wanted to tell you was about the dinner. That was the best part. Drusilla? The daughter? Why, she looked like somethin' you drink through a straw. And when Mama was fillin' her plate for her Drusilla shouted out—so far, like old Alma Breckenridge, she hadn't said a thing all evenin' either—not to let the potatoes touch the meat? Bobby and I just looked at each other and laughed. ‘What'd you say?' he asked Drusilla. ‘I just couldn't eat at all if they were touchin',' she said. Don't you think that's about the strangest thing you ever heard?”

“Heard stranger,” said Sailor. “But she's a case.”

Lula clucked her tongue. “And then, later on? After the Armisteads had left? Bobby said Drusilla was the first real Mississippi belle he'd ever met.”

On
The Dating Game
a cute blond girl in a short white dress was standing and giggling and hugging a tall cute guy who had lots of dark hair.

“So what's happenin'?” Lula asked.

“This couple's goin' on a date to Hawaii,” said Sailor. “The girl chose him over two other guys.”

“Don't the reject guys get anythin'?”

“Gift certificates to Kentucky Fried Chicken,” Sailor said.

“That don't seem fair,” said Lula.

“Hell, why should
The Datin' Game
be different from real life?” asked Sailor. “At least them boys is gonna get somethin' to eat.”

“I'm not sure what to do about Mama.”

Lula was sitting on the edge of the bathtub smoking a More while Sailor stood in front of the sink, shaving.

“What can you do?” said Sailor. “She's been your mama for twenty years and change now. You know she ain't about to change her ways at this late date.”

Lula was looking up at the back of Sailor's head, admiring his curly chestnut hair.

“Honey?” she said. “I sure am glad that prison haircut is on its way to growin' out. Gives me somethin' to grab hold of while we're makin' love.”

Sailor laughed. “When I was twelve there was a girl lived next door named Bunny Sweet who was a couple or three years older than me. Bunny loved an old hit record, ‘Party Doll' by Buddy Knox, and she used to go around singin' it all the time, especially the part where he says, ‘run my fingers through your har.' That's how he says it, ‘har' not ‘hair.' One day Bunny and two friends of hers came up to me and asked if they could run their fingers through my har, like in the song. They liked that it was so long and wavy. These girls were kind of the bad girls in the neighborhood. Hung out with the local hard asses, guys older than them. They were real sexy, you know? So, sure, I told 'em, go ahead. They formed a circle around me and Bunny slid her long, purple nails into my hair, and then her friends did it, too.”

“What'd they say when they did it?”

“Somethin' like, ‘Ooh, baby, it's so soft!' I remember the tobacco stains on their fingers, the way they smelled from Florida Water and cigarettes. I thought about their hands, that they'd jacked guys off and stuck 'em in their own pussies. I had a hard time standin' still. When they finished they sniffed their fingers, rubbed 'em together and wiped 'em off on their skirts. It got me real excited.”

“You never done nothin' more with 'em?” asked Lula. She flicked the ash off her cigarette into the tub.

“Not with those girls, I didn't,” said Sailor. “It wasn't much after that time, though, that I went with a buddy to a party at some girl's house I didn't know. We got into a game of spin the bottle and I wound up goin' into a back room with a very proper-lookin', pretty little blond girl wearin' a blue-checked dress. We were supposed to just kiss once and come back out, but it didn't happen that way at all. She had shiny red bee lips and we really got into it, takin' our time and usin' our tongues.”

Lula laughed. “That's hell o' raw for twelve years old,” she said.

“It was a surprise, too,” said Sailor. “For me, anyway. 'Specially from this straight-lookin' chick I ain't never seen before. So after about three or four minutes we hear the kids in the other room hootin' and hollerin' and whistlin'. Both this girl and I were hot, right? And like I say, real surprised by it. ‘I guess we better go out now,' she says to me. We were in a kind of storage room, with pieces of furniture all stacked around us, in some dim red light, and her eyes and lips looked huge. She put her hand on the side of my head and real slowly brushed her fingers through my hair. I tried to kiss her again but she dodged it and ran out. I heard the kids hoot and shout even louder when she came back in the other room. I remember startin' to wipe her lipstick off with the back of my hand, but I stopped and decided to leave it there. Then I followed her out.”