Sailor & Lula (41 page)

“I'll be fine, Mama. Tell Grandmama hello and hope she comes through.”

“Hush, 'course she will. Take care now, Pace. Love you.”

“Love you, Mama.”

“Be home soon's I can.”

“Bye, Mama.”

“Bye.”

Pace hung up and checked his pockets to make sure he had some money, then left the house and headed for Nestor's Sandwich City to meet the Rattlers. He took a bus to the corner of Canal and St. Charles, got off, walked one block down Canal to Magazine, turned right and continued walking. At the northeast corner of Felicity and Magazine, an
obese black woman with the largest bosom Pace had ever seen was sitting on the curb with her legs in the street, singing “Give Me That Old-Time Religion.”

“It was good for the Baby Jesus,” she sang, “it was good for the Baby Jesus. It was good for the Baby Jesus and it's good enough for me!”

Pace kept walking, wondering how in the world a woman's breasts could grow that large, and he picked up the tune. He began singing, half to himself, half out loud, inventing verses as he headed to the rendezvous.

“It was good for Elvis Presley,” Pace sang, “it was good for Elvis Presley. It was good enough for Elvis Presley but it weren't good enough for me.”

Pace used Stonewall Jackson, Jimmy Swaggart, Paula Abdul, Magic Johnson, Jimmie Rodgers, and the Ninja Turtles in his altered version of the hymn before he reached Nestor's. He entered Sandwich City and stopped singing when he saw Lefty Grove and Smokey Joe sitting on stools at the counter eating fried oyster po'boys.

“Isn't that Pace goin' into Nestor's?” Beany Boyle asked her son, Lance, as she turned right off Napoleon Avenue into Magazine.

Lance leaned forward over the front passenger seat of his mother's Taurus station wagon and took a look.

“Yeah, that's Pace,” he said, and flopped down on the backseat next to his sister, Madonna Kim.

“That Nestor's supposed to be some kinda drug den, ain't it?” said Beany.

“I guess,” Lance said. “The Rattlers hang out there, I know.”

“The who?”

“Rattlers, Mama. They're brothers.”

“Them the ones their daddy set fire to the high school in Cut Off after they quit teachin' Creationism? And the mama's stuck away in some Mississippi home for the depraved?”

“Think so. They're mean ol' boys.”

“Wonder if Sailor and Lula know where their boy's spendin' his time.”

On his way home from Nestor's, Pace stopped to read a handbill posted on a telephone pole in front of Panther Burn Items.

When he'd finished reading and turned to go, Pace was startled to see a tall, thin, red-faced man in his mid-thirties wearing a yellow straw cowboy hat, plain long-sleeved white shirt with the cuffs and collar buttoned, and sharply creased black slacks standing directly behind him reading the same handbill over his right shoulder.

“Knew a fella worked derrick with told me his wife started complainin' once, ridin' in the car,” said the man. “ ‘Life with you's just terrible,' she said to him, and threatened to throw herself right out of the car onto the road. ‘Hold on just a minute,' this fella told her, ‘let me see I can get up some speed.' He guns it up toward eighty, then cuts the wheel hard into a hundred-eighty degree spin, car rolls over four times and somehow they both survive without even one broken bone between 'em. Fella said after that whenever they was drivin' and he started goin' a little too fast, she just quit talkin' and clamped on her seat belt.”

Pace slid away from between the pole and the man, nodded at him and walked off without feeling compelled to reply.

“It's awful what's goin' on in the world, Lula, and it ain't about to stop until the worst. Am I right, Dal?”

Marietta was lying in her hospital bed, reading the Charlotte
Observer,
and talking to Lula and Dalceda Delahoussaye, each of whom were seated on chairs on opposite sides of the bed. They were waiting for the doctor to stop by before having Marietta taken to the operating room.

“Looks it,” said Dal. She and Marietta had been friends since their days together at Miss Cook's in Beaufort, more than forty years before. Since that time they had never lived farther apart than a ten-minute walk.

“Whole planet's come unhinged,” said Marietta. “Look at this: ‘Uniformed Gunmen Kill 8 at Cockfight.' That's the headline. ‘Men in military uniforms sprayed gunfire at a group of people attending a cockfight in central Colombia late Saturday, killing eight people, local news accounts said yesterday. The private Radio Cadena Nacional and the domestic news agency Colprensa said the gunmen killed eight people and wounded four in Yacopi in Cundinamarca state, 60 miles north of the capital of Bogota.' Dal, ain't that where Louis used to do business, Bogota?”

“No, Marietta, it was La Paz, Bolivia, but it weren't no better there. Had them a brewery Louis sold 'em parts for. The company needed their own army to protect it and the workers. Louis stayed down there three months once, settin' it up and makin' sure it run right. You remember, Marietta, that's the time I took advantage of his absence to redecorate the livin' and dinin' rooms? He come back and didn't even notice.”

“Some husbands is like that, Dal.”

“
Some
husband is right.”

“Mama, did you take that yella pill the nurse give you?”

“Yes, Lula, dear, I took the yella pill.”

“Suppose to calm you.”

“I'm calm.”

The doctor came in, followed by a nurse.

“How we doin', Mrs. Fortune?” he said. “You ready?”

Marietta folded the newspaper and handed it to Lula.

“Been ready for two hours, Dr. Bonney. Been borin' Mrs. Delahoussaye here and my daughter to death. Don't think you know Lula, do you? Lula, this is Dr. Bonney, a descendant of Billy the Kid. Don't he have the most beautiful wavy black hair and blue eyes? Doctor, this is my favorite daughter, Lula Pace Fortune.”

“Lula Ripley, now,” Lula said, extending her right hand to the doctor. “How do you do?”

They shook hands.

“You live in New Orleans, your mother's told me.”

“Yes, with my husband and son. He's fifteen.”

“It's my grandboy's fifteen,” Marietta said. “And his daddy that acts like it.”

“Mama, stop! Sailor's providin', and he ain't been in no trouble for years.”

“Mrs. Fortune,” said Dr. Bonney, “I'm gonna let Nurse Conti here prepare you for surgery, if you don't mind. Ladies, I'm afraid you'll have to leave now.”

Dal stood up and kissed Marietta on the cheek.

“You be fine, love,” said Dal. “I'll talk to you tonight.”

Lula leaned over and kissed her mother on the forehead.

“Be tough, Mama.”

“Ain't it strange how I always think of your daddy at moments like this?” said Marietta. “Clyde's face slides right into focus whenever I have a serious situation to consider.”

“Don't worry, Mrs. Fortune,” Dr. Bonney said. “You won't hardly be able to tell we touched you.”

“Didn't think Billy the Kid fathered any children,” said Lula.

“I'm not a direct descendant of his, Mrs. Ripley, but we are of the same stock.”

“Every family's got its killers, Doctor,” said Marietta, staring straight at Lula. Then she turned and smiled at Dr. Bonney. “It ain't as if there's anything you could do about it.”

“Pace, buddy? Bob Lee mentioned to me today that Beany told him she saw you goin' into Nestor's Sandwich City yesterday down on Magazine. That right?”

Pace looked at Sailor, then away. They were in the kitchen and Pace was eating a bowl of cereal. The Wheaties box with a picture of Michael Jordan on it was on the table between them.

“I guess.”

“What you mean, you guess? Either it was you Beany seen or it wasn't. Which?”

“Mean I guess it was me, she says so.”

“So what's happenin' in Nestor's these days other'n dope deals?”

Pace scooped up a tablespoonful of Wheaties and crammed it into his mouth. He couldn't answer while he chewed. The telephone rang and Sailor picked it up.

“Ripley home, Sailor speakin'. Hi, peanut, how you? That's good. Told you she'd pull through. Your mama's like a big dog on a red ant. How long you figure? Uh huh. Well, do what's needed. I know. Oh yeah, we're fine. Pace is sittin' here wolfin' his Wheaties like any other All-American pup. We're busier'n blazes at the factory. Okay, I will. Love you, too, peanut. Bye now. Uh huh. You bet. Bye.”

Sailor hung up.

“Mama says to tell you she loves you and that both Grandmama and Auntie Dal send their love. Mama's got to stay with your grandmama for several days, until the doctor says Marietta can get around on her own. Now, what's news at Nestor's?”

“Nothin', really, Daddy. Met up with some boys there, is all.”

“You in any kinda fix, son?”

“No, Daddy, I ain't.”

“You'd tell me, you was, wouldn't you?”

“ 'Course.”

“Come to me anytime 'bout anything, you understand? Ain't nothin' can upset me 'less you're less'n straight about it.”

“I hear you, Daddy. Thanks.”

There was a knock on the back door and then it opened. Coot Veal came in.

“Hey, Sail!” Coot said. “Hey, Pace!”

“Hello, Coot,” said Sailor.
“Que paso?”

Coot had on a yellow and blue LSU baseball cap with a drawing of a tiger on it and a white tee shirt with the words BUBBA'S BILOXI PORK BAR printed on the front and WE MIGHT BE CLOSED BUT YOU'D NEVER KNOW IT on the back. He took a clean bowl and a spoon out of the dish tray, sat down at the table and poured himself some Wheaties.

“I was a kid,” Coot said, “they had Bob Richards on the box. Bet you don't know who Bob Richards was,” he said to Pace.

“Right again,” said Pace.

“O-lympic pole vault champ, I believe. And a good Christian. Hollywood even made a movie about him. Or was that Bob Matthias? Maybe they made movies about both of 'em. Matthias was a O-lympic athlete, too. And prob'ly not a bad Christian, either, though I don't know for sure. What I do know for sure is I ain't partial to this new deer dog law they're tryin' to put through in Mississippi. The rich folks there get it in and next week the sonsabitches in Baton Rouge be hollerin', too.”

“What law's this?” asked Sailor.

“Seems the Miss'ippi Property Rights Association's lookin' to outlaw huntin' with dogs, only allow still-huntin'.”

“They can't do that,” Pace said.

“Hell, they can't!” said Coot. “Look what they done about abortion and taxes. Ask your daddy, he knows. Landowners want the territory to themselves, and there ain't much open territory left. No more road huntin' at all, they say, from trucks or standin'. Wanna do away with dogs altogether. You 'magine not allowin' blue ticks or runnin' walkers in the woods? Only place you'll be able to see 'em is up in the Madison Square Garden prancin' around with a tube pushed up their asshole.”

“Why they doin' this?” Pace asked.

“What begun it was a old boy in Petal, I think it was, got shot by a hunter after he chained up the hunter's dogs runnin' loose on his property.”

“I used to work over in Petal,” said Sailor.

“Didn't know that,” said Coot.

“For a short time, in a lumberyard. After I weren't required by the Texas state prison system to stay close to home no more.”

“Some bad apples, no question, could ruin the sport for ev'ryone. Let their hounds run wild, kill people's pet ducks, scare children. But it ain't most of us can't control our dogs. Hell, a man's dogs is part of his fam'ly. Problem is the landowners who do their huntin' in private clubs. They buy up all the land in the first place and don't leave nothin' for the common man. People should be let to hunt the way they like to hunt. Miss'ippi state legislature done already passed a bill bans huntin' from within one hundred feet of the center line of a road. Now they mean to regulate firearms, too.”

“It don't sound good,” said Sailor.

“Pretty quick this whole country'll be nothin' but a suburb of Tokyo, anyway. We're lucky, they'll let us out on Sunday to take a leak. Other six days we'll be too worried or busy bendin' over to risk it.”