Wolf Whistle (6 page)

Solon told Lord Montberclair what he knew. He emphasized that this information was absolutely free, it wouldn't cost Lord Montberclair nothing, not a red cent.

Solon didn't leave out the part about how Sally Anne was dressed. He apologized profusely for having to mention such things, the sturdy cotton duck of the trench coat against the flesh of her bare calves, the wide bare V at her throat and chest.

When he got to the part about the child Bobo riding in the front seat of the car with Sally Anne, Solon grew cautious. This whole thing could backfire on him.

He said, “I know Sally Anne must of had her reasons, good reasons, too, for inviting that buck up in the front seat with her. I didn't question that part one minute, no sir.”

Lord Montberclair was red-faced from coffee and brandy. He wagged his head slowly from side to side.

He said, “I don't know, Solon. I just don't know.”

Solon let the silence hang between them for a long time.

Solon said, “I hope you won't feel no compellsion to pay me nothing for this information.”

Lord Montberclair looked up now, as if he had not heard.

He said, “I didn't know that you and Sally Anne were close.” He shifted the Luger in his lap.

Solon didn't care much for the way this sounded.

This was a tricky business, no two ways about it.

Solon said, “Close? Weil, now that's a good one, ain't it? You're not only a smart man, Mr. Dexter, you're comical, too. Close? Me and Miss Sally Anne? Are we talking about the same two people? Whoo! That's a good one, all right. Me and Miss Sally Anne—close friends! Now that'll be the day, won't it! Wake me up for that one, I want to see it my ownself!”

Lord Montberclair said, “You said you were close. You said she was like a sister to you.”

He was switching the Luger's safety catch on and off, on and off.

Solon said, “Oh, I see what you mean, now I see the mistake here. I done misspoke myself. I done left a false impression, if that's what it seem like I said. Sho did.”

Lord Montberclair said, “Are you close or not?”

He shifted the Luger from one leg to the other, clickety-click with the safety.

The strain of this interview was beginning to wear on
Solon now. He sensed that he was out of his element, and that there was no money in the venture in any case.

He said, “Miss Sally won't hardly speak to me, Mr. Dexter. Won't look in my direction.”

Lord Montberclair said, “I distinctly heard you say you were close friends.”

Dexter drank straight out of the bottle of brandy now.

“You said she's like a sister to you. That's what you said.”

Lord Montberclair was very nervous. He was flipping the safety on the trigger guard, on and off, on and off, click-click-click-click-click.

Solon was astonished to find the truth coming out of his mouth before he could stop it.

He said, “I got me a sister in St. Louis, Mr. Dexter, baby sister name of Juanita, call her Neat, run off and married a nigger pimp and set up for a ho and broke our mama's heart, you can imagine, called me up one day and said she's about to die she's so happy, she's so much in love with this nigger pimp, and she's so glad to be out of Mississippi, she said she's got this little nigger baby, little boy, and me his onliest uncle in the world. Onliest woman in the world I'd die for, Mr. Dexter. I miss her so much I want to die sometimes, so instead, I go down to New Orleans and roll queers, killed one of them, maybe, I don't know, probably did if I could remember it, and all I'm thinking about is,
What's done happened to me, what's going to come of me, too proud to go see my own little sister and my own baby nephew, what's ever going to come of me?”

Lord Montberclair said, “So you were lying. You're not close to my wife.”

Suddenly Solon was able to lie again, and his life became more manageable.

He said, “No, I just meant she put me in mind of Juanita, my little Neat, my own sister. That's all, that's all I meant to say. Not that Miss Sally Anne is married to a nigger pimp. I didn't mean that.”

Lord Montberclair stopped clicking the safety of the pistol. He seemed satisfied.

He said, “You've suffered other troubles as well, I understand. Something about a fire? One of your children injured? I've been meaning to ask about the tyke.”

Solon was astonished at what had just happened. He almost never thought of Juanita. What in the world got into his head to tell all that stuff about Juanita?

He put his fist up to his mouth and gave a little cough.

“Scratchy throat,” he said. “I think it might be an allergy.”

Lord Montberclair poured three inches of brandy into Solon's coffee cup.

Solon fingered his pistol through the gabardine. Its small heft provided some comfort.

He could get it out, too. It wasn't impossible. Not quick draw, but he could get at it. You wouldn't have to be quick with Lord Montberclair, drunk as he was.

Solon could work the pistol out of his pants pocket, a little at a time. Dexter would never notice. He could have that little pea-shooter in his hand before Dexter ever knew what happened. He could blow this arrogant rich man's hair and eyeballs all over these ferns before he knew what hit him. That's what he was going to do, too, if Lord Montberclair wanted to pursue the subject of Solon's white-trashery any further. Lord Montberclair wouldn't look half so handsome, with all his military and plantation airs, if he had a bullet between his eyes, now would he?

Sometimes in New Orleans Solon didn't even remember the men he robbed. Sometimes he would wake up the next morning with folding-money in his pocket and new suits in his closet, and maybe a wet dick in his pants, and not know where he got any of them. He might have killed somebody and not remembered, he honest to God couldn't be sure. He hoped he left at least one of those perverts bleeding in a hotel room.

Solon wouldn't mind killing Lord Montberclair, either. It would give him pleasure, sholy would. All Solon wanted to do right now, though, was just to get out of this durn crazy house alive.

The conversation was over at last. Nothing was decided.
Lord Montberclair said much obliged for the information, thank you very much, you are a good neighbor, words to that effect.

Solon said, “No payment necessary, none at all.”

Lord Montberclair said, “You're a good man,” and paid Solon nothing, stingy son of a bitch.

After Solon had walked back out into the rain, Dexter Montberclair filled up a whiskey glass with ice and poured bourbon over it—it was late enough in the morning to switch from brandy to bourbon now—and sat down again in a wicker chair on the sun porch. He stretched out his legs in front of him and propped the glass on his stomach.

His lips were numb with alcohol. For two months now, Sally Anne had been sleeping in the room she called her office. It was an insult to Dexter. A woman was supposed to sleep in the bedroom with her husband. Wasn't she? Wasn't that the deal when they got married? Didn't a woman promise to sleep in the bed with her husband, when they spoke their sacred marriage vows?

The last time they talked, Dexter said, “Why, Sally Anne?”

Sally Anne said, “I don't know.”

He kept on asking the same question.

All she would say was “I don't understand it myself, Dexter. I've just got to be alone for now.”

Well, what kind of answer was that?

When Dexter stood up from the wicker chair, he wobbled a little bit and realized that he was drunk.

He left the glass of bourbon on the table and stuffed the Luger into the front of his pants. He started to walk through the house, though he wasn't sure where he was going, and he felt unsteady on his feet.

If that sassy little nigger lived out on Scratch Ankle, Dexter's own place, it would be a different story. He'd evict them, whole family, simple as that, cut off their credit, anyway. That was the whole problem with letting foreign niggers come into town. Our own niggers don't act like that. It's these out-of-town niggers that are forever causing the trouble.

Dexter had seen the light revolver in Solon's pocket. It might as well have had a string of Christmas tree lights on it, it was so obvious. You could all but read the writing on the barrel.

This was who Dexter found himself indebted to.

Dexter was pacing the house. Sun porch, living room, kitchen, and back again. He adjusted the gun in his pants for comfort.

His head was beginning to clear up. He needed a clear head, to think what he had to do here. He had to do something. He might just pistol-whip the shit out of his wife, it's what she deserved, humiliating him like this. It might give him some satisfaction.

He paced through the kitchen and looked at the dishes Sally Anne had left in the sink. She must have gotten up in the middle of the night and fixed herself a snack. A plate with crumbs on it, cookies maybe, the last of a pan of brownies, and a glass that had had milk in it.

Why didn't she tell him she wanted a snack? Why didn't she come out to the bedroom and wake him up? He would have been glad to fix her something to eat, to bring her milk and cookies down to the room where she was sleeping, for that matter. All he wanted was for his wife to be happy.

Dexter was crying now, and adjusting the pistol in his pants. Why wouldn't Sally Anne just allow him to make her happy? He wanted to take care of his wife, to baby her, to make Jell-O for her when she was sick, and tapioca pudding, and to feed it to her with a spoon, and then to sleep next to her. They could work something out, couldn't they, if they just loved each other?

S
OLON
G
REGG
didn't know what kind of reception to expect at home. Not so good, probably. Probably nobody at home was going to be overjoyed to see him, he might as well admit the truth about that, right up front.

He had left in a hurry six months ago and hadn't been in touch since. Still, he sometimes let himself hope that things would be different. Why didn't he wish for a million dollars, while he was at it?

Solon thought about the Prodigal Son, that sleazy, lazyass rich boy in the Bible. It pissed Solon off to think about him. Maybe that's the way some rich sissy's daddy acts when you spend all his money and run his good name in the ground, chasing off from home in a big car without no insurance on it and living in a pig sty in some unfriendly city in a foreign land.

Shit. Goddamn. Must be nice, that's all Solon had to say about it, must be durn nice. “Daddy, look, I done spent every cent you give me and been rolling queers in New Orleans and living in a stinking room in the District where the former tenant was still laying dead in the bed in the room with me, blue as a fuckin Andalusian rooster, when I paid my cash deposit to the landlord and helped him pull the dead sumbitch out in the hall by his feet. I been fucking fatted calves and wearing they clothes and spending they money on food and drink a swine wouldn't never eat, ever since I seen you last.”

Oh, I'd just love to see that, Solon thought. Yeah, that's the story that would assure me of a proper welcome home, now wouldn't it. I can just hear myself telling my daddy that story when I was a boy. I wonder what kind of reception I would of got if I had come back home with a story like that. I never would have got that ridiculous story out of my mouth. I never would have made it up the front steps, with a story like that on my lips.

The truth was, if Solon had been the original Prodigal Son, Solon's daddy never would have noticed that he was gone, let alone that he had come back home. Solon's daddy would have been too busy trying to get his hands up underneath Juanita's shirt to feel her breasts in the kitchen while she was crying her guts out and trying to fix something for the old pervert's dinner. And Solon's younger brother, who stayed home and sacrificed his whole life trying to keep their daddy from fucking Juanita, would have shot Solon in the heart with a deer rifle for running off in the first place. It's a lucky thing the Prodigal Son didn't have a younger brother like Solon's, he would have got his ass blowed off. The Prodigal Son got lucky twice, if you wanted Solon Gregg's own personal opinion.

Solon thought about that old song, “If I knew you were coming I'd have baked a cake.” Solon liked that song, he really did, it was hopeful, it was upbeat and gay, you know, but in a way it made him think about his daddy pinching his sister's nipples in the kitchen. It kind of made him want to throw up. “Howdja-doo, howdja-doo, howdja-doo!” Snooky Lanson and Giselle McKenzie, singing like a couple of songbirds, just warbling they hearts out on
Your Hit Parade.

Solon wished somebody would bake him a cake, hire him a band, grandest band in the land, and be waiting for him and smiling and happy to see him when he come back home
from wandering in a foreign land and living an unfortunate life in a pig sty.

That's what he would do for Neat, too, if she ever came back, his sister Juanita, even if she brought her little nigger child and pimp-ass husband with her, he didn't care. Well, he cared, but he'd just be so glad to see her.

In fact, he'd love to see that child. He'd bake that child a big durn cake. Children loved cakes, he bet. Chocklet. He'd bake that little nigger kinfolk of his a big chocklet cake, if he knew how. He could find out how, he could look up a recipe, buy him some ingredients down at Red's, and a bowl and a spoon and a pan to cook it in.

And he would try to find something in common with the pimp, too, Neaty's husband. What did nigger pimps like to talk about? he wondered. He could tell him about rolling queers in the Quarter. Well, Solon wasn't sure about that, but he would think of something.

Solon had listened to some extra delightful tap dancing on the radio when he was down in New Orleans, tippity-tippity-tappity-tappity, whoo! Whoever was doing that toe-tapping could dance like a motherfucker. Fast, too, lickety-split. Niggers liked to dance, even pimps. Hell, yes! Solon would talk to Neat's husband about dancing. Well, sure. See? That was just the thing! That was just great!