Zion (20 page)

It was dusk when James Luke took a room at the Sweet Camellia Motel in Pickleyville. The place was a no-tell motel with a seedy little history as early as the 1960s when he’d last lived in the area, and the establishment had gone downhill ever since. The motel was made famous locally by Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner who stayed there when they played the Louisiana Hayride, and folks said Dolly had the time of her life at the Camellia. At the front desk, James Luke said he wanted two nights, and he wrote, “Solomon Burstein, Houston, Texas,” on the room ticket, no address, and no identification offered.

The night clerk took notice of the extra twenty-dollar bill placed on the Formica desk. “Three nights, right?” the clerk asked James Luke. His hand touched the extra twenty.

“Like I just said, two nights, and no phone calls. I’m not here. A man needs a little peace and quiet away from the old lady sometimes, you see. Two nights if nothing changes.”

“And the extra bill?”

“Oh, it’s Hanukkah in July, my brother, a little tip to help out on life’s little journey.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Burstein. And I don’t know nothing about anything.”

“Right again.”

“Cool. Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah, whichever you’d prefer, Mr. Burstein.”

Once inside the bleakly lit motel room, James Luke took the city directory from beneath the Gideon Bible where it lay in the nightstand drawer, and he found the number listed for Howell Claiborne. Then he drove across town to Cowart’s Meat Market where he used a payphone outside. When he called the phone number, it was the current residence of the college president. Dr. Myles Polk’s wife answered. She said Dr. Claiborne was no longer living there, and that he’d retired. He now lived at his family home on Thomas Jefferson Avenue. James Luke told her he had found a purse belonging to Dr. Claiborne’s wife with some money in it, and Feliciana Polk quickly passed on the telephone number to the house, as well as the street address downtown. He wrote on a slip of paper he took from his shirt pocket.

Good God, this is easy, James Luke thought. He called the house but got no answer. He immediately drove back to the motel. He stretched out on the hard bed with his black cowboy boots still on his feet and took a long and restful nap, the sweet sleep of success.

When he awoke, he decided to go drive past the place to see what lay ahead at the Claiborne House. James Luke took a fifth of Old Crow from his suitcase, poured himself a Dixie cup full and drank it down in three strong swallows. He figured it had to be a mansion by the address on Pickleyville’s wealthiest street. After taking a shower, he got dressed in some fresh clothes. He lit a Camel. Best to go over to the house and take a look around. It being Friday night, maybe Charity and her old man are out for a night on the town. Shit, maybe she’s got somebody else, fast as she is to move from one to another.

He found the big house. He passed it twice in the Suburban. It was eleven o’clock at night, and he saw a Mercedes parked under the carport. Lights were on inside the house, first and second floors, and he wondered why they’d be up so late. He scoped out a safe place to access the house from the back, and a spot to park the vehicle two blocks away. He settled on the street beside the Federated Presbyterian Church. It was near the private alley that led behind the big houses on Thomas Jefferson Avenue. This will do, he thought,

So he drove out to Cowart’s Meat Market again and called the house. Charity answered, and James Luke immediately knew the voice. He asked for her husband, and she said he was gone to Washington, and before she could say another word, he hung up the phone and howled into the night, a holler that no one heard as he stood on the empty roadside at the payphone in front of the aging butcher shop. Then he drove back to the Sweet Camellia.

Dr. Howell Claiborne spent his summer doing research for a book on the Southern Agrarians, a group of Nashville poets from the 1920s and ’30s who argued for conservative approaches to nearly every social endeavor, all of them Anglo-Saxon bigots, reactionaries, intellectuals and writers that came from old money. The research time was funded by his severance package at the junior college, money to keep him quiet about where the bodies were buried over the years, cash to make him fade quietly and loyally into the shadows. For travel expenses, he was supplemented by the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was gone so much it made Wesley wonder if the old man had another woman on the side. In fact, he had seen Dr. Claiborne only twice during the nearly two months he’d stayed at the house.

On Friday morning, Dr. Claiborne returned to the Library of Congress. He’d only spent a few days in town. While he was home, Wesley slept in the pool house. After Dr. Claiborne’s departure, however, Wesley spent the night in Charity’s queen-sized bed just like always. Sometimes he felt a little ashamed of himself, embarrassed by his role at the Claiborne place.

He eased awake on Saturday morning and saw Charity sitting in a wing-backed chair smoking a marijuana cigarette and reading a copy of
Cosmopolitan
, her wet hair wrapped in a towel. She’d just gotten out of the bathtub. He saw her legs tan and shining in the morning light that came from the second floor window, the terrycloth robe covering her upper thighs. He felt happily exhausted from the sex and the strain of the night, the two of them out late before coming home to their bedroom play. They’d attended a musical at the Saenger Theater on Canal Street in New Orleans after driving the old man to the airport for his trip to D.C.

“I bet that was the best sex you’ve ever had,” she said.

“Every time we make love it’s better than the time before,” he said, and he sat up on his elbows in bed.

She stood and walked over and pinched his right cheek. “You’ve been with the best and you’re a real pro already.” She extinguished the joint in the ashtray on the nightstand beside the bed.

He blushed, almost high from the smoke.

“You’d better go to your apartment before Cornelius comes here to do yard work this morning. You know how the coloreds talk.”

“Okay.”

“Wesley, you need my help on the project today?”

“No, I’ll be all right. I’m almost done.”

“Good, I’m going to drive back to New Orleans and look at some clothes I saw in a window on Canal yesterday.”

That evening, Wesley was tired from working on the shelving at the junior college Industrial Arts Shop. His car wouldn’t start, and he realized the starter was out. He had to walk all the way back to Thomas Jefferson Avenue.

Despite the car trouble, he’d planned to get almost everything finished by the time he brought it to the house, a prefabricated job. He would simply screw the pieces into place in the room with Nate’s help. This was his goal. He was almost done with everything, and could do touch up work on the stain at the house if needed. Dr. Claiborne had ordered a fancy wooden ladder with a brass rail from an advertisement in
The New Yorker
, a magazine the old man bragged that he’d read since his undergraduate days at Ole Miss. Wesley took the ladder out of the cardboard packing and saw that it would be easy to attach once he got the slide installed. The shelves were adjustable with setting holes and wood pegs to raise the track that held individual shelving in place.

His mind was hardly on his work, however. Images of Charity’s naked body in the bedroom, her long hair invaded his mind like the aroma of a swamp after a storm. But as soon as his daydream and lust became particularly titillating, he’d remember the verse from the Bible: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” The memory disturbed him, and he tried to push it out of his head.

Wesley spent time planning the details of the installation so that he’d only need to make one trip with Mr. Kirby’s truck and the trailer from the shop to the house. Keep it simple, he thought. He’d grown so accustomed to Charity’s bed and the love-making that he hated to finish the job and move to Lafayette, and at times he even plotted ways to remain in town, maybe commute to the architecture program at LSU. He’d even slowed down finishing the work to make it last the whole summer. He knew better than to ask Charity if he could stay. Deep down, he understood his role in her life. The rejection would have been too much for him. Had she wanted him to stay during the fall, she’d be the first to tell him not to leave, and he knew it. The lack of invitation bothered him.

Charity bought a new pair of black go-go boots, a short skirt, and a red blouse at Reed’s on Canal in New Orleans. She had her nails done and her long hair styled in a feathered flip. She was going to model the new outfit for Wesley, she said before she left to shop, and take him to dinner at Clay’s Restaurant downtown. She liked controlling him, and she acted as though she had him on a tether like a little lapdog.

On Saturday evening, Wesley drove Charity to Clay’s in the Mercedes, and they ate filet mignon. She ordered an Old Fashioned with double shots of bourbon. She relished the stares from townspeople when the pair went out in public. The few who spoke to her gave her an opportunity to introduce him, which she did—as her personal assistant, an artist friend. After the dinner, they watched a pornographic movie at the Joy Drive Inn. Hers was the only Mercedes in the dark lot, and they put the top up after a while, fondling each other in the backseat like a pair of high school students during prom night.

Wesley sat at the table in the little pool house Sunday morning. He was finished with the work on the shelving project in the Claiborne study. One day during the upcoming week, he planned to ask Nate to help him start the installation, assuming he didn’t push it ahead yet another week to stall his departure from Charity’s bed. He was finished with his summer independent study at Baxter State, and with C.J. Kirby’s final “A” grade, Wesley’s associate’s degree coursework was complete, except for attending the December commencement ceremonies. Kirby had given Wesley an “A” for the course, and he said he would be posting the official grade at the Registrar’s Office in a few days.

Now that he was basically done working on the shelving, he could return to his art. Some months before, he’d started painting a scene from the Big Natalbany River, the green color almost black over the brown water full of silt, the depiction of a creek after a spring rain. At Baxter State, he’d won the second-year student art award in December, a juried show judged by an Alabama artist with only one name: Beeson. He had some paints and oils, a palette that fit his hand, and he wanted to offer the finished product to Charity as a parting gift when he left for architecture school in a couple of weeks. There was added excitement because she said her husband had called President Van Broussard at Lafayette, and they were committed to a Presidential Scholarship, though he didn’t know the amount. He was thankful for how well everything was going, especially after the hard rift with his father. Wesley believed he needed to make his own way in the world, and he now had a real peace about his decision to move into the Claiborne House.

Regardless of the assurance of a right decision, he missed his mother. Wesley often visited with her at the campus library. He decided to call her at home with the telephone in the little pool house. He planned to hang up if his father answered, because he didn’t want to deal with the man.

Sara answered the phone. She said she was by herself. “Oh, Wesley, you haven’t called me in over a week. I was worried.”

“I’ve been busy with the job at the Claibornes’ place. And the Maverick broke down yesterday. It’s parked at the shop on campus. It won’t crank. The starter’s out. I’m going to have it rebuilt over at the machine shop on Cherry Street. It’ll only cost twenty dollars to fix it, but the old guy says it’ll take a few days. I almost called you for a ride, but I didn’t want to deal with Pops, and—”

She interrupted him. “Why didn’t you tell me your car was broke? Are you able to fix it yourself?”

“Nate and I can do it. But Pops has gone crazy. I don’t want to talk to him. It’s not worth it.”

“Like I’ve said before, you had nothing to do with the dispute between him and Charity. And I’ve had about all I can take of him. He is completely rigid and won’t give a damned inch. We’re done talking. Tom is set in his ways, and I think I’m going to leave him.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Yes, I am serious. I don’t like how he’s treated you. It’s never going to get any better between us. It’s just not right. I’ve had enough of his self-righteousness. If there’s an innocent person in all of this, it’s you.” Her voice cracked, and he thought she might start crying.

His eyes began to well up with tears. “Mother, I don’t know what to think.”

“Let’s get some lunch tomorrow and talk. We can go to the Hard-Row Barbeque. He never eats there, and I’ll pack his lunch for a change. I haven’t fixed him lunch in almost two months.”

“Okay. What time should I get there?”

“Quarter after noon. How are you doing with the carpentry project?”

“I’m about done with it. Just the last details left.”

“Good. And I have some money I’m going to give you. I can pay to fix the starter. If you need a ride, call me.”

“Thanks, Mother.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too. Bye.”

Charity attended the morning service at Federated Presbyterian Church two blocks away from the house. She kept the normal routine while Dr. Claiborne currently absconded in Washington. The old man couldn’t abide the holy rollers, so she went with her husband or alone to the Federated Presbyterian Church on Sunday mornings and to Reverend Hussert’s congregation by herself on Sunday nights. Even when he was out of town, she followed the usual split service routine to keep up appearances. She hadn’t seen Wesley all day.

At Federated Presbyterian Church, she mouthed the traditional prayer of confession with the other Reformed congregants, but her mind was as blank as an empty tablet when she said the words. She took lunch at the country club, and she played a round of tennis with a young man she was trying to seduce, a love interest she’d cultivated as Wesley’s replacement to live at the pool house and to sleep in her bed once he left for Lafayette. After the country club, she went to the evening service at Reverend Thad Hussert’s Flaming Sword Church at five-thirty, where she had been baptized and born again for the seventh time a few months earlier. On stage, she fronted the band with a tambourine as she danced in a long dress covering her go-go boots, her good looks and flamboyance making her the center of attention of every man in the sanctuary.

The amplified band played hard driving gospel songs with drums and electric guitars with riffs like rock anthems sung by the Rolling Stones. Church members played instruments on stage behind and beside the pulpit. She’d seen the Stones in 1972 with Sloan Parnell in Houston, and she had not been as excited by any music until she started attending the Flaming Sword. The major difference between the church band and the Stones was the lyrics to the tunes that they played but not the sensual allure of the rhythms and beat. The raw sex in the music was exactly the same.

Later in the evening, Wesley heard a knock at the pool house door, a steady but feminine sounding knock-knock-knock. He figured Charity had come back home from the Flaming Sword. He quickly covered the painting on the easel with a cotton cloth. The young man walked over to the apartment door and opened it. Charity smiled. She wore a long dress with her hair pulled up like a Pentecostal church lady, but the top three buttons on her blouse were splayed open. “Hi babe. You’re looking mighty good,” she said, sounding upbeat. She walked over and kissed him, and they embraced. She was three inches taller than Wesley in her new boots.

“I’m fine.”

“Good.” She looked at the painting on the easel stand, his oil tubes spread out. “I didn’t know you were working on any art.”

“I’m trying to finish a piece. I worked on it a while back.”

“What are you painting?”

“A scene from the river near where I grew up, the Big Natalbany River.”

“Can I look at it?” Without waiting for an answer, she removed the cloth covering.

“Yes,” he said, a little perturbed.

She stood staring at the work. “The Big Natalbany sure is small, ain’t it? But it’s beautiful. The painting is almost done, right?”

“Nearly. Maybe in a week, maybe less. Now that I’ll be finished with the study soon, I can devote more time to the painting.”

“I want it, and we’ll buy it. It’s simply stunning.”

“Well, my plan was to give it to you.”

She squeezed his upper arm and held it. “I’ve got an idea. Have you ever drawn a nude before?” she stared into his face. He could feel her breath.

“Sure, for the art department last year. It had to be done on the QT at a gallery in New Orleans. My professor said it would have been a complete scandal at the junior college.”

“Did you do a good job on it?”

“I think it came out all right. Here, I have it in my portfolio.” He reached into his portfolio and pulled out a piece done in charcoal on canvas, and he took it out of a slip to cover. It was a nude woman with short hair, a bob cut, sitting in a straight back chair.

“You’ve got a great eye. My husband collects art, as you know, and I bet he’d pay well for some of your pictures if you have more. And the great thing is that his friends will get jealous, and they’ll want to buy some stuff, too. They’ll bid your price up out of pure jealousy. Greed and jealousy make the world go around.”

“Like I said, I was going to give you the river painting when I leave for Lafayette—as a present.”

“Please, you need the money, and Dr. C. has plenty of money, believe me. He inherited property and Wall Street stocks galore, and it’ll be just as special of a gift. He’ll pay at least two hundred dollars, and you should take nothing less from him,” she said.