Trick Baby (6 page)

The Reverend said, “Son, let me out and pull up the alley a piece. I'll put my old truck on the street. Wait for me at the back door.”

Blue let him out and got back in. I cut into the backyard and backed twenty feet up the alley. My headlights beamed on the Reverend just as he went into the black maw of the shed.

We heard the asthmatic wheezing of the elderly engine when the Reverend tried to start it.

Blue said, “I sure hope Jesus starts that wreck for him. This Fleetwood has a bitch of a need for cover. Now listen, Folks, when we get inside, I'll handle the tale of our troubles. A ding-a-ling like him might spook out on us if the tale isn't, as you always say, a glove-fit. Chumps prefer a beautiful lie to an ugly truth.”

The truck finally stuttered to a clanking roar. The Reverend backed it out and went down the alley to the street. I pulled the Fleetwood into the shed and cut the lights and engine. Blue and I got out and walked to the tunnel blackness at the back door.

The hot, sexy voice of Billy Daniels torched faintly through the chilling air. He was singing
Old Black Magic
. I looked up into a second-floor bedroom window across the alley. The shade was up. I nudged Blue.

A naked yellow dame was standing beside a dresser near the window. In the light from the lamp on the dresser we saw her grinning and talking to someone out of our sight. She took a drink from a tall glass. She backed up to the dresser. She put her palms on it. Then she leaped up to a sitting position on the dresser top.

She jackknifed her curvy legs. She held her wide-apart thighs against her fat breasts with her hands. She scooted her massive rear-end to the edge of the dresser and leaned her back against the mirror.

Blue said, “That filthy slut is posing for dirty pictures. I wonder what the hell is keeping Joe. I'm freezing to death.”

A milk-white barrel-chested giant hulked into view. His great biceps rippled as he adjusted his long blond wig. Huge shiny earrings dangled to his rouged cheeks. He reached and got a chair and sat down in front of the dame.

He leaned forward and put his elbows on his thighs. He
supported his big ugly head in his cupped hands. He just sat there, gazing into the wondrous valley of womanhood that was, alas, painfully absent in him.

I said, “Blue, that bird ain't no photographer.”

Blue said, “Folks, a freakish jack-off like that should be stroked with a barbed-wire club, then tarred and feathered.”

I said, “Now, Blue, what the hell is so horrible about that pitiful jerk aching to be a fluff? Dames have the best of it, you know.”

T
here was a fumbling rattle at the back door. We turned away from the scene across the alley. A pale river of yellow light suddenly flooded the darkness. Reverend Josephus stood in the doorway pressing an index finger against his lips. We went by him into a soot-stained kitchen reeking of stale collard greens.

He shut the door and whispered, “Bertha Mae is been feeling mighty cranky of late. Ain't no sense to have her up running her mouth and asking about our goings on. 'Course, I'm the boss of this house. You just follow me. We'll go to the back bedroom upstairs to talk.”

He pulled a long piece of greasy string hanging from a bald light bulb in the cracked ceiling. The yellow light winked out. He stepped through an arch and started up a rickety stairway.

We followed in the dim glow from a wall light at the top of the musty stairs. We passed a half-opened toilet door as we went down the upstairs hallway on our way to the rear bedroom. In the distance behind me I heard Bertha Mae snoring in guttural growls.

The Reverend went in and pulled another string. An amber light came on. Blue and I stepped inside. We stood looking around the curtainless room. Ragged shades hung at two windows facing the backyard. A lopsided bunk-bed sat near the windows on a mildewed gray carpet.

I saw my funhouse image in a shattered dresser mirror, spider-webbed beneath a faded picture of a savage Christ, cat-o'-nining the terrified grifters down the temple steps. The peeling purple wallpaper was smallpoxed by gray grime. It was going to be a helluva long pleasant weekend.

Blue and I took off our hats and coats and threw them across the top bunk-bed. Reverend stood in the middle of the room with that big question in his eyes.

He said, “What trouble you in, Blue? You ain't still robbing honest people on the carnival wheel, is you? Bertha Mae and me can't shelter no crooks. The Lord would strike us dead.”

Blue said, “You haven't heard? Johnny and I are in the restaurant business. I've repented my evil ways. Say, Reverend Joe, I have a call to make. Do you have a phone?”

Reverend said, “I got the same phone and number I had five years ago. I give it to you on my preaching corner. But you ain't never called like you promised. It's on a table down that hall from the kitchen. You ain't making no long-distance call is you, Blue?”

Blue said, “No, it's just to the Southside.”

Blue walked toward the doorway. He looked over his shoulder and said, “Reverend Joe, I wouldn't dare double-cross the Lord.”

I heard Blue's fourteens slugging the stairs. The Reverend stood looking up at me in a strange way.

He said, “Johnny, excepting for your mouth, you don't look much like Phala. She sure had a beautiful angel-face. She were that teasing color of them half-chink gals that got white pappies. I were the bar porter in that cabaret where she danced until I got fired for nipping from the bar bottles. She used to talk about your paw. To the end, she thought he were coming back to her. She were my friend.

“She used to slip me coins for my wine when I couldn't ketch up to Blue. All them no-account nigger hustlers and winos around Thirty-ninth and Cottage was just aching to fool around with Phala. But she'd put her pretty nose in the air and pass 'em like the dirt they was.

“They know'd she'd married a white man and they hated her proudness. Oh, son, I could have saved her from those sinful imps. But I were stinking drunk in the lobby of the flea-bag where they abused her.”

He stopped talking to wipe at his tears with his sleeve. I had never found out how Phala had been tricked and mass raped. Blue had heard what had happened that early morning, but I could never get him to go into detail.

I said, “Reverend, tell me just what happened. Don't worry, I'm numb after twenty years. I won't be hurt to hear about it.”

He said, “It's a awful story. Everybody on them streets know'd what happened to your mama that morning. One of them slick hustlers eased up beside her at the bar just before closing time.

“Phala was drinking and tired. She didn't see the pill go in her glass. Two of them dirty niggers carried her out to the back door of the flea-bag across the street. They had rented a back room on the alley for the night. They say that cold-hearted nigger what owned the cabaret just grinned when she were carried out. He were glad because she'd never let him have her.

“When them devils finished they rotten fun, they went in them streets for blocks around. They told all the tramps and winos about your beautiful mama laid helpless and naked in that room.

They say them dogs went in and out of there until daybreak. I were sobering up in a chair near the lobby window. I heard the pitiful screams of a woman. Then your mama came running by.

“She were naked as the day she were born. Her belly and thighs was caked white with jism. She were cutting herself bloody with her fingernails. I guess she were trying to scrape them niggers' filth off her. She had woke up and know'd by the stink what had happened.

“I ain't never going to forget her face. Johnny, her eyes was twice bigger and she tored hunks of hair from out her head. I stumbled to my feet to ketch her. But she were running too quick.

The last I seen, she were going down Cottage Grove, screaming her heart out. The Lord is surely just, though. The sneaking nigger who put that pill in her glass got his throat cut the week after. Forgive me, son, for not being in shape to save her.”

I put my hand on his shoulder. I said, “Reverend, don't feel guilty. I can't blame you. Thanks for telling me the whole story. I don't have to wonder now.”

My legs were shaky. I sat down on the couch. I wiped the sweat off my palms with my handkerchief. I wondered for the ten-thousandth time since that night when it happened if the awful guilt were mine.

If I just had gone home when I got off from the theatre, I would have been there outside the cabaret to walk Phala home as always. Then for the ten-thousandth time I told myself it had had to happen to her.

It wasn't really my fault. It would have happened at some other time and place. I heard Blue coming slowly up the stairs. His face was tense when he came through the doorway. I guessed that Cleo still wasn't home.

Blue stood and looked down at Reverend Joe. He said, “Reverend Joe, when is the last time you and Bertha got any news from down home in Vicksburg?”

Reverend's thumb and index finger seized and shimmied the tip of his bulby nose. He closed his eyes in deep thought. He raked his forty-dollar uppers against his bottom lip and sat down on the bottom bunk cross-legged.

He said, “My goodness gracious. We ain't writ or got a scratch from down there for mighty near ten years. All Bertha Mae's kin is long dead. My grandpaw, Isaac, passed away in Forty-eight. I got baptised with the Holy Ghost and the Fire. I ain't heard from them good-time niggers I grow'd up with in twenty years, near 'bout. Why you ask, Blue?”

Blue got to his feet and took the stage. He was in action to cinch
our hideout until Monday noon. He stood before the Reverend with bowed head and narrowed eyes. His fists were clenched at his sides. He swung his head from side to side in anguish. He crashed his fists against his thighs and sobbed.

“Reverend Joe, I'm the biggest fool there ever was. I've let my sympathy for one of our old hometown niggers get the Klan and the Mississippi police at my throat.

“I thought sure you and Bertha had heard about the Bigelow Brothers. You remember Sporty? His brother Bob got that hunk of watermelon out of your throat. You had almost choked to death. He blew air into your mouth and saved your life.

“It was just before I left home with the carnival. You, Bob and Sporty Richard were always great pals. My troubles started when I ran into Sporty on the Southside about three weeks ago.

“He had just hoboed to Chicago from down home. He was a sad sight and acted like a crazy man. I took him home with me to a bath and a hot meal.

“Sporty told me he and Bob were walking down the road. They were high as Georgia pines, heading home to their shack in the country. They saw a new Mercedes-Benz stalled on the roadside.

They saw a beautiful young white girl sitting inside it. She was grinding the starter. Reverend Joe, they had to be two crazy, drunk, unlucky Niggers. They walked up to a white woman on a lonely road at two
A
.
M
. in the morning in Mississippi to offer help. Even half-wit Niggers would have run like hell from her even if she had been dying.

“She was big-shot Doctor Landry's daughter. He's a wheel in the Klan. Old Sporty and Bob stuck their heads through the car windows. Now you know neither of them would run second to King Kong in a beauty contest. Marva, that's her name, took one look at them, screamed and leaped from the car door on the other side.

“The idiots tried to hold her, to reason with her. She was quick and agile. She fought free of them, leaving Sporty holding her torn
coat and dress in his stupid hands. They got cold sober when she raced down the highway shouting
help
and
rape
.

“Reverend, they found a hiding place that will bring back many memories to you. You can't have forgotten that cave we boys dug in thick woods on the old Buchanan Plantation. Your grandpaw, Isaac, beat us almost senseless in that cave. He caught us nipping on the potato hooch we'd made. Remember, dear old friend?”

The Reverend had been straining forward, gnawing at his dirty fingernails. Tears were oozing from the corners of his sad maroon eyes.

He moaned, “Oh Lord have mercy! 'Course I remember. Oh, Blue! Did the Han ketch Bob in the cave?”

Blue leaned down and placed his hands tenderly on the Reverend's shoulders for an instant. Then Blue said, “No, thank God, the Klan didn't find him. Sporty and Bob hid in that fearful darkness until almost daybreak. They didn't know where to turn. Finally Sporty decided their only hope was to swing onto a fast freight going North.

“Bob was paralyzed with fear. Sporty begged him to leave. Bob wouldn't budge. Sporty left him whimpering, huddled into a ball like an unborn baby in that black cave.

“Reverend Joe, to make a short story shorter, Sporty made it to the railroad line. He swung onto a northbound train and made it to Chicago.

“I got Bob's childhood sweetheart's address from Sporty. You know, Jessie, with the clubfoot and hazy mind? Jessie could get Bob's friends to go out there and get him to safety. I had the phone in my hands to have Western Union send the telegram. I was going to have Jessie call me right away, collect.

“Reverend Joe, someone or something snatched that phone from my hands. An unearthly voice started talking to me. It kept saying over and over, ‘Blue, you don't want the Klan to get Bob. You know you can't trust any of those poor frightened black people to get Bob
to freedom. Jessie can't be trusted with Bob's life. Blue, only you can save him. Go to him and rescue him. No harm will come to you.'

“I don't know who or what snatched that phone and talked to me. But, Reverend Joe, please believe me, it really hap—”

The Reverend cut off the tale. He leaped to his feet. He threw his arms around Blue. The embrace locked Blue's arms to his sides. The Reverend was dancing an ecstatic little jig as he nested his face in Blue's chest.