Sailor & Lula (67 page)

“Ain't seen you so quiet since that time I visited you in the bin and you was drugged dumb.”

“Tell you, Lula, God's truth, it took all my energy and more just to try accomodatin' and consolin' Duke and Lady Taylor. Their guts is twisted, their hearts are broke and their brains been blasted by a A-bomb.”

Lula and Beany were near Willacoochee, Georgia, halfway between Waycross and Tifton. It was a sunny day but colder than normal, not a cloud in the sky.

“That ET's mama's name, Lady?”

“It's really Ladina but Duke calls her Lady, so ever'body else in Lake Charles does, too. Suppose when she's back in Switzerland she's called Ladina.”

“Sorry I wasn't more helpful to 'em, Beany, and to you, too, but I just could barely stand it myself. I been through plenty, as you know, but the shock of seein' that girl stick ET right in front of our eyes done somethin' to me I can't rightly describe.”

“Made you sick, is what it did. Sure did me. I kept up for ET's folks' sakes, is all. Horrible the way his beautiful green eyes was emptyin' out when he was on the ground, life leakin' like anti-freeze into the earth.”

Lula's eyes were fixed steady on state highway 82. She felt Marietta's presence, as if her mama were sitting in the car next to her instead of Beany. Marietta wasn't such a difficult person as most people thought, Lula had decided. She just knew what she wanted and was tough-minded about it. Lula was not so tough, not like that, never had been. She wished that the murdering whore Jamilla Salim had not been wearing dark glasses when she stabbed ET. Lula thought that she would have liked to have seen her eyes at precisely the moment the blade entered ET's body. After Jamilla and Hamid had been taken into custody in Fernandina Beach, Lula had seen her on the TV news sitting in the back seat of a highway patrol car. Jamilla, still wearing dark glasses, had stuck out her tongue at the reporters and photographers and Lula remembered being stunned at how incredibly long it was, the longest tongue by far that she had ever seen.

The trip has pretty much been a blur since we left Savannah and now we just got to Dothan Alabama where Sailors daddy lived at one time and worked as a colporteur hawking bibles and other religious items door to door. This was before Sailor was born he told me even before his mama met his daddy. Sailor had some family in this state but he didnt keep in touch and we never visited or wrote. I always had a strong feeling for family but not Sail except for me and Pace of course and as long as he and Mama kept a decent distance from one another they was all right. Just now the song Stars Fell on Alabama come into my head the way Billie Holiday sung it with that crackly wrinkle in her voice My heart beat like a hammer my arms wound around you tight and stars fell on Alabama last night. Sailor used to say she was a sly singer knew right when to put her toe in the water. Beanys been unearthly silent until this evening when she got into it on the telephone with Hedy Lamarr seems Hedy found out her husband Delivery Music been giving free produce from his market to a 18 year old name of Jacey Spikes whos a member of their church Rock Hard Baptist shes the singer for a Christian band called Rock Hard. Delivery says there aint no hanky panky in it hes just helping out a poor girl and her family. Hedy told Beany this Jacey Spikes was responsible for their previous minister having to leave after his wife found nude pictures of Jacey on his computer she was fourteen then now shes five foot eight with platinum blonde hair and titties out to there. Beany asked Hedy if she had any proof of Delivery carrying on behind her back and Hedy said no but that this girl was such an attraction male attendance at their church gone up by more than half since Rock Hard been performing on Sundays. Some of the wives complained to the minister Reverend Swindle who Hedys convinced is a secret morphine addict has a strange close friendship with a local Doctor Caldwell but he told them the collection baskets reflect overwhelming approval of most worshippers end of discussion. Dont ride herd too close on your man Beany said to Hedy or your liable to get a horn in your leg better to let Delivery have his fantasy at his age he aint very likely to start something he most
probably cant finish anyway. Out the window of our room at the Hotel Lurleen I can see smokestacks shooting shit high into the dark sky theres gold silver and other colors sparkling in the blackness its beautiful but probably are particles cause cancers lung disease and allergies. Lord it seems everywhere you look theres something to worry about I know what Sailor would say so dont look.

Beany had the wheel and following her conversation with Hedy Lamarr had regained some of her energy. She was doing her best to dismiss from her thoughts the unfortunate episode in Savannah. She and Lula were cruising in the Merc past cottonfields on state route 84 in a steady drizzle.

“Once I saw Wilson Pickett, who for my money was the funkiest, down and flat out dangerous-seemin' soul singer of 'em all,” said Beany, “on a TV show. He was from Alabama and had gone as a young man up to live in Detroit, where he stayed. The interviewer asked him had he ever been back to Alabama and Pickett got wicked on the spot, said he'd been booked to perform in Tuscaloosa, I believe, and was on the way there from the airport in Birmingham, but when the car started passin' cottonfields he freaked out, told the driver to turn around and take him back to the airport. His memories of havin' to pick cotton as a child hit him harder than he could have imagined, he couldn't take it. ‘Ninetynine and a half just won't do!' Pickett shouted, like in his song. ‘Ninety-nine and a half won't cut it! Gotta be I'm one hundred per cent or I'm out the game!' ”

“Poor man,” said Lula. “I can understand not wantin' to go back somewhere somethin' awful happened to you. For instance, I ain't in all this time been back to Texas, nor will I ever go.”

Rain began falling harder.

“Mind if I cut on the heater?” Beany asked.

“Please do. I just felt a little shiver myself.”

“That's what Wilson Pickett was doin' on that TV show, shiverin', soon as he heard the word Alabama. It'll prob'ly happen to us now, Lula, whenever someone says Savannah.”

Lula could not help but think how beautiful the cottonfields looked in the rain.

I just now switched off the TV in our room at the Chickasaw Motor-In. Beany done most of the driving today so shes been sleeping for a couple hours but Im more restless than usual. Watching and listening to the news dont help calm me it never does but I got to admit its hard not to think the world is in the worst shape probably since WW2 and no doubt worse since now with the kinds of weapons almost anyone can get their hands on it wouldnt take but a few minutes for the entire planet to explode and almost all its creatures to expire. Pace never has had no kids so I dont have any grandbabies to worry about Ive always been a little maybe sometimes more than a little sad about that but now Im thinking Im not because of how theyd have to be living in this messed up time in history. Sailor read to me once a story about how after a nuclear war the people who remain half of them live above the ground and the other half beneath in caves. The ones in the beneath who are ugly and beastly and never see the light of day control the ones above who are all beautiful cause of course they have sunlight and flowers and fresh air and eat fruit and vegetables. The beneath people are really raising the outdoors ones like cattle to eat. Whenever they need to have a feast the beneath creatures turn on a loud siren that hypnotizes the healthy outside ones who all march like zombies toward the place the loud noise is coming from its the entrance to the cave where the beast people are waiting and when enough of the healthy pretty people have gone down that day the siren stops and the cave door closes. Then the beautiful dumb ones come out of their trances and go back to their perfect seeming life like nothing is wrong and they dont miss the ones gone under to be devoured by the beneath people. In the end I think a volcano explodes and covers everything and the beneath folks are cooked below and the up top people are boiled alive by a flood of hot lava. So both groups are wiped out and thats the end of civilization. Now we got a situation where all these different countries think they got the right answer or religion including of course our own and I dont believe nobody does some are more greedy than others and more righteous but a person in a mountain hut in Asia
got just as much right to their version of the way things ought to be as one in LA thinks more about her tan line than one who might be starving in a desert covered by flies in Africa. And here at home we got demented men shooting down children in schools and politicians in Washington DC supposed to be our leaders molesting boys and girls its just like Rome was in the long ago I believe. My question now is of those who will be left on this planet after the bombs and missiles go off which ones go beneath and who stays above. I know the presidents and dictators already have underground places with food and guns stashed away to go to so it aint really no big mystery who the beneath people would be. And when their food supply runs out they got the guns and going cannibal aint a stretch. I would choose to be above if I could but not if the beneath could control my mind. Its late and we want to drive from Mobile to NO tomorrow so Ill quit and try to sleep some. Maybe before everything goes forever ass over backwards as crazy old Coot Veal Sailors hunting buddy used to put it about a million years ago people everywhere will come to their senses and stop their feuding and bad behavior but I hate to say I doubt it. I think this version of civilization is already tipped over too far to get right and there aint no way in anyones heaven or hell to keep us poor fools from being ramroded down the chute. In Pauls second letter to the Thessalonians he wrote And to you who are troubled rest with us when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God and who shall be punished with everlasting destruction. Well Im troubled but cant rightly rest believing how I do that there aint going to be no selection about who shall be destroyed.

Lula made sure that she and Beany got an early start the next day, which was Sunday, October eighth.

“Elmo, he was a big baseball fan,” said Beany, “maybe you remember. Anyway, October the eighth is a date I can't forget 'cause it's the anniversary of the day in 1956 Don Larsen of the New York Yankees pitched the only perfect game in the history of the World Series. Elmo'd been a Yankee fan from since he was a boy and that was a big day for him. Used to he'd get in fights with kids all the time around Natchitoches, where he grew up, he told me, because of his likin' the Yankees. Most of the other kids rooted for the Saint Louis Cardinals because back then they were the only team from the South or closest to, bein' that Missouri was a border state. I never was much of a fan myself but those times I got socked away at Oriental, I used to listen to baseball games on the radio. They had it on and it soothed me some, kept me calm just to know somewhere out in the world things was just goin' on the way they was supposed to. Stan Musial would double down the right field line, the crowd would be makin' noise and there wasn't nothin' to argue about. It was just a double, and that was that.”

“It was the drugs kept you calm,” said Lula, “more'n the baseball.”

“Combination, I guess.”

Lula stayed on the old highway, keeping the Mercury in the slow lane on purpose in order to take a good look at what Katrina had done to the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

“Heard the wind was so powerful it moved the casino buildin's in Biloxi back off their foundations,” said Beany.

They were cruising through Pascagoula but there wasn't much to see in the way of damage. There were plenty of trucks carrying building materials on the road, however.

“People here're pretty strong,” Lula said. “I don't know how I'd do if a hurricane carried off ever'thin' I owned. Wonder could I find it in myself to tough it out or just move on, start new somewheres else.”

“Hard to say.”

“After Sailor was killed, I kinda felt like I didn't want or need anything. Mean I didn't much care about possessions, didn't want to look at old photos, stuff like that.”

“You had Pace.”

Lula nodded. “ 'Course, I did, and he was a big help to me, but it didn't take much for me to decide to leave New Orleans and go live with Dal. Pace took most of Sailor's stuff, sold the house and made sure all the finances was in order. Dal couldn'ta been kinder, also. I had it pretty easy, a place to go and all. Nothin' like the folks down here had to face after Katrina.”

“After the big hurricane in the Florida Keys in 1935?” said Beany. “They had more'n a thousand men workin' on buildin' the highway through there and didn't get 'em out in time. Weeks and months later bodies were found hangin' from trees and in the mangroves around Islamorada. Tidal wave swamped the train sent down from Miami to evacuate everyone. Eight hundred people died.”

“Storm musta been the size of Katrina,” said Lula.

Now on both sides of the road from Ocean Springs to Waveland were piles of debris, and behind them what was left of the houses and buildings that had lined Highway 90.

“Wonder if the old Wildrose house in Pass Christian was destroyed,” said Beany.

“You mean that giant black wooden one with the fancy wraparound porch and parapets and towers and outside staircases?”

“Yeah. The one where the little girl was kidnapped from like the Lindbergh baby.”

“They found her, though, right?” said Lula. “The Wildrose girl.”

“Uh huh, but practically suffocated to death in a steamer trunk on a wharf in N.O. Men who took her were arrested tryin' to get on a ship to Brazil, had the ransom money on 'em. Remember seein' a picture of the kidnappers in handcuffs next to one of nine-year-old Mabel Wildrose on the front page of the
Picayune
. Two bald guys with black mustaches wearin' bush jackets.”