by Rod Davis
Sooner construction began, sooner the store would open. Sooner the store would open, sooner the battle would start. Sooner started, sooner finished. Elroy felt it would be better for all just to get on with it. He thought if you couldn’t avoid something, best to get through it and go on. And best if you could minimize the duration of the fight with a little thought up front.
So that was his plan. He’d decided to stop having his people drive by Corina’s botanica on Eldora Street so much, but he would make at least one more trip himself. He and Julio would drop by and tell Corina exactly what was coming down. Not for her benefit, but for their own.
She was on a roll. Good thing, since three clients were already waiting for her at the botanica when she got there at eight and four more had come in before noon. But the spirit was in her and she pulled through the vortex swiftly and effortlessly like a strong sailor lifting up shipwrecked passengers from a lifeboat to the deck of an ocean liner.
Lateesha needed to take better care of her son, to keep him away from the gangs in the projects, and a pigeon to Ogun bolstered her strength in the battle. Clyde required more of a scolding—he was back for the third time from his drinking. Corina didn’t need a spirit to tell her what was wrong. She told him not to come back till he hadn’t had a drink in a week and she thought maybe he was scared enough to do it this time.
Miz Odetta was still upset about her sister dying and leaving her in the big house off Simon Bolivar by herself. Corina told her to burn a candle to St. Jude and promised to visit the cemetery and make an offering at Wylotta’s grave, but she didn’t tell Miz Odetta what it would be because although she was in Corina’s congregation at the African Spiritual Church of Mercy, she wasn’t voodoo and didn’t approve of it. Or at least didn’t want to say she did.
And so on. By noon, Corina had run through all her clients and was so hungry she sent Paulus out for a cheeseburger and Dr. Pepper, cholesterol and high blood pressure and the doctors be damned. She felt good. Very good and ready for an afternoon full of twice as many clients. It was the Lord’s day, she thought, still stoked from the confusion and then the clarity after the strange message last weekend in her reading with the white man, Houston.
When she heard the tinkle of the bells over the front door she looked up with a smile, expecting Paulus with nourishment for the hours ahead.
She got Elroy.
It took less than a second for the blood to drain completely from her head, then pump back at twice the volume, and for her smile to twist into something that could best be described as not of this earth.
“Good afternoon, Reverend.”
Nor was he alone.
“Afternoon, Mrs. Youngblood,” said the scarecrow behind him.
“I know it must be July outside,” Corina said. “‘Cause I know I wouldn’t be seeing Elroy and Julio Delgado in my store unless Hell was frozen over and it be snowing in New Orleans on a hot day.” Standing next to a shelf filled with Ogun pots and superas, she made no move to greet them. Nor did her crossed arms and deepening scowl offer encouragement.
Elroy wasn’t fazed. He walked up to the counter, smiled, and laid down a stack of papers. Julio was less felicitous, waiting back near the doorway, studying the hanging bananas, Elegba altar, and, over by the corner refrigerator, a large iron kettle filled with sticks. “Mayombera,” he said under his breath to his brother, who heard it and nodded, as if it meant nothing. It did and didn’t. Elroy knew Corina had studied the ways of palo, which was like santería but without the saints. It was a cult of the dead from the heart of the Congo. Elroy knew the rituals himself but Julio had never liked palo.
Corina heard Julio and saw his anxiety. She liked it. She smiled at Elroy to show him both things.
“Now, Corina,” Elroy began. “Don’t be mad. We have come here out of respect for you because we have business to talk about.”
“Huh,” she snorted. “Monkey business if it from you.”
Elroy forced himself to keep smiling. He forced himself not to think about the shape of her breasts. What perfect fits for his mouth. She was amazing and never ceased to move him. Fortunately he didn’t get a hard-on.
He began to unfold a large sheet of paper. “I know you don’t like the store we want to open, querida—”
“Don’t be talking that Latin shit to me—”
“—and I can understand. That’s why Julio and I have come down here today.”
“Unless it’s to tell me you’re moving back to Fidel, I don’t want to hear it.”
Elroy sighed. Maybe this was an idiotic idea after all, as Julio had been arguing all the way in the car. “Tell your competitor your business plans?” he had said. “Are you totally insane, Elroy?” And like that.
Elroy unfolded the paper all the way. Corina could see that it was a map of the city. A big one. Like you could get at City Hall. She saw Elroy catch her looking and immediately averted her gaze.
“Okay, I’ll get to the point. Because you are my friend, because we are, or maybe were—” he looked at her.
She said nothing.
“—Because we were good friends” —he smiled, again without reaction from Corina—“and because I am your padrino, and because I want to prove to you I am not trying to destroy you, that I only want to start a business, I am going to tell you my plans in person, now. So you won’t hear them on the street and so you won’t be able to say I was doing things behind your back.”
Elroy looked around to Julio, who came up to join him at the counter.
“This is the map of all the botanicas in town,” he said. “Please,” he said, extending his hand, palm up, to her, “please come here. It is important and I only have so much graciousness in me, even for you.”
Corina studied his face. It was true. The smile’s edges were hardening into a mask. Pursing her lips, leading with her hips, she stepped forward. When she reached the counter, she drew back slightly, as if to say she wasn’t to be touched.
As Elroy’s finger moved from one red circle to another on the map—each site a botanica—she could see the pattern. Two were over across the river in Algiers and nobody went over there anyway. Two more were in the Quarter and were phoney—just for the tourists. A fifth was hers, just lake side of the Quarter. And the other three, Uptown, lake side toward Gentilly and over near Xavier University, were all run by the Delgados. Most of the business was in a cluster more or less cradled by the river, and about halfway up towards City Park. That made sense—more people, more traffic. It was one of the reasons she’d chosen her own site off North Canal.
Then she saw another red dot. A bigger one. With an X in the center.
Her eyes shot up to meet Elroy’s.
“I don’t believe it,” she said.
“That’s why I’m here.”
She looked at the dot again to be sure. It hadn’t moved.
“But there’s an old washateria on that corner.”
“Won’t be after next week.”
She stepped back from the map. She was trembling but didn’t want him to see so she held her hands behind her back, tightly.
“It was the best place,” he said.
“We looked all over,” Julio added. “But this lot had been vacant a long time and it was a repo. The bank wanted to get rid of it.”
“I never did hear nothing about it for sale.”
“It just came open,” said Elroy. “And that’s the truth. We were looking at a place more over toward Elysian Fields, up in there, because it’s not so poor even though it’s all black in the neighborhood—”
“—And the agent we were using phoned and said Delta National had to get rid of some property fast to take care of some government loans and we should come look—” said Julio.
“—And we saw it and it’s perfect, that’s the truth,” Elroy resumed. “Most of that block on Ladeau is empty, except for t
hat laundry, and it’s the right size for us and the price was right and we took it.”
“And it didn’t matter it’s only five blocks from where I stand right now hearing all this.”
“That’s not true. It mattered.”
“But it was a good price,” Julio added.
“And a good location—you have to admit that.”
She looked at them both. She looked at the red dots on the map. Her daddy had said that once—people do anything when it comes to money. “Nothin’ mean nothing’ when it come to money, except money.” She thought about her palo pot. She thought about the .38 her sister Eddie had given her and how it was in that pot.
“Only thing I have to admit is you got some nerve comin’ in here to tell me all this.”
Elroy sighed and began folding the map. “Maybe it wasn’t a good idea.” He glanced at Julio. “I just thought—”
“Get out.”
“Damn it all, Corina. Why don’t you close this up like I’m going to do my other ones, or if you’d rather just sell it to me and come work for us? You could make more money—” He turned his face quickly, just enough to avoid an ashtray spinning past the bridge of his nose.
“I told you she was crazy,” Julio said.
Elroy and Corina looked at each other a long moment. Megabytes of data were exchanged; an entire world lived and died. Children were born, families reared, generations bequeathed unto others. Love made, wrinkles earned, diseases faced, conquered, succumbed to. Landscapes changed from swamp to concrete, back to swamp. Snakes curled upon lambs. Children grew vipers from their dreadlocks and great swords descended from the heavens to smite enemies of the Lord. Unity, calm, destruction, rebirth, peace.
But Corina left Eddie’s .38 be.
“We’re done,” Elroy said, and turned to leave.
And it would have been a strong exit. But as Julio opened the door, Paulus came in, trying to balance a cardboard tray holding two Diet Cokes and a bag of cheeseburgers and fries from Jack-in-the-Box. Not expecting Julio, Paulus collided with him, and, trying not to drop anything, fell backwards onto the sidewalk. The drinks spattered on the concrete and on him.
He banged his head, hard.
Spooked, Julio pushed the door all the way open and rushed outside. A quick half-skip at the last possible instant allowed him to clear Paulus’s extended legs. Landing near the boy’s upper torso, he steadied himself, dropped down on one knee, and reached out towards Paulus’s head. His intention was to see if the boy was okay. Paulus batted Julio’s hand away, mumbling, “Get off me you Cuban faggot,” or something to that effect.
Elroy reacted quickly, too. Gathering up his papers, scrunching the map into a wad, he followed Julio out the door.
Corina waited a moment. From her position, she couldn’t see Paulus stretched out on the sidewalk and thought he had merely stumbled because of the stupidity of Julio and random chance—accidents happen.
But when Elroy bolted, she moved, too.
As she got to the door, she saw Paulus on his back looking up at the two Cubans, who were jabbering at each other in Spanish—Elroy seemed to be angry at Julio, who seemed defensive. Now raised to a sitting position, Paulus touched the back of his head, bringing back a smudge of blood on his fingertips. “Baby—” said Corina.
But as she stepped forward, thinking maybe to get the .38 after all, everything turned upside down again. In a trice, she was slam down on her own butt, not hurt, but heedful that her skirt was now up around her cat for anyone to see. Which was, at that moment, Julio, who was face down on the sidewalk between her ankles.
She shook her head and sat up. Julio, his face scraped and rosy, got up quickly, averting his eyes. She had been wearing light blue panties.
Paulus, who had been spared the latest barrage, sat hands in lap in a kind of stupor. Just behind him, near the curb, Elroy was draped around the frame of a bicycle. The rider was a few feet away, on the hot asphalt of the street. Spread all around them both were dozens of ice cream sandwiches and popsicles.
“I be God blessed!” exclaimed Corina, in a rare lapse of language. “You been hit by your own people.”
Moaning and clutching his left arm, Elroy dragged himself to his feet, just as did the unfortunate who had been on the bicycle. Not a bicycle, really. More a tricycle. The driver was a Mexican man of about forty, in a vendor outfit of white shirt and blue slacks. Mounted on the back of the trike was a heavy, insulated trunk which said, “Helados Delgados.”
“It your ice cream man.” Corina began to laugh.
Elroy glared at the driver. “Don’t you use your bell?” was all he could think to say.
“Sí, pero—”
“Oh, shut up,” Elroy interrupted. Then he sat down again in pain. It was too awful to even think about. They hadn’t even planned to get into the ice cream route trade except they thought it was a way to eventually advertise for the SuperBotanica. They made money off it but—shit. His arm really hurt.
He couldn’t think. All he could do was observe this goddam Mexican standing in front of him looking like he was going to be in big trouble, which was true, true, true, and then Corina laughing and Paulus getting up and neither laughing nor frowning—some weird in-between expression—and Julio having about the same dog-face as the Mexican.
“I need to go to the hospital,” Elroy said to his brother. Then, to the Mexican, “Get this out of here.”
Then, to Corina, “I shouldn’t have come.”
“No, honey, I guess not. ” She laughed. He hated her voice when it was that way. Loud, street-like. She was an American nigger when she was like that and he didn’t even like thinking that way but his arm hurt and she was laughing and now it was going to be war.
He bent down and retrieved his papers. Julio tried once more to touch Paulus to see if he was okay but the boy glowered at him so intensely he backed away toward the car.
They went to the ER at Tulane, because it was closest.
Hairline fracture. Six weeks in a cast. For Julio’s face, some antiseptic cream but no stitches.
Julio dropped Elroy off at his home up near the University of New Orleans, and, without it needing to be said, drove over to Delgado’s #1, the small grocery from which the ice cream tricycles were supplied. He quickly found the driver, Mr. González. In fact, the man had used his bell to warn Elroy, because Julio had heard it and had moved aside, but there wasn’t much point telling Elroy anything about the afternoon other than that it was over. Which it was. Julio gave Mr. González two weeks’ severance.
All considered, it was strange that Julio was smiling later as he drove down Broad Street toward his own modest, but immaculately refurbished bungalow near City Park. He knew he was smiling when he glanced in the rearview mirror to inspect the abrasions on his cheek. He fumbled in the dash pocket for a meringue tape.
In the armories of siblings, nothing is so powerful, nor so long-lasting, as the unspoken I-told-you-so. But Julio said it aloud to himself anyway: “Damn it, Elroy, I told you so.”
What was so crazy about that? People speak prayers when no one is around. Last rites fall upon the silent ears of the dying. Cannot filial comeuppance find a place amid the dance-beat of the congas?
“Santa . . . Santa Maria,” began the singer for the Wilfrido Vargas band. “Madre de Diós . . .”
7
After three long counseling sessions, Gus wasn’t really up for number four, Stephanie Daedaleux, but there was no way to get out of it. He had become possessed of a thorough understanding of his situation. He knew exactly why Reverend Daniels had resigned to take a job at a small church in the Florida panhandle. He knew exactly why Elizabeth Hapsenfield no longer made any pretense of looking for a replacement for Daniels. He had a full appreciation of the downside of the overall venality of the pact into which he and Elizabeth had entered, and through which, he further understood,
his downside was but her line item personnel reduction.
Each new visit to the chaplain was thus but a fresh astringent to Gus’s wound. Self-inflicted, to be sure, but painful nonetheless. And being used was only the half of it. Had he not misrepresented himself in one of the more profound ways possible?
As he watched Stephanie shake her handsome, patrician head just enough to send the blond page boy into a double-reverse gyration with flow-back lock—twice to one side, twice back, then back to exactly the same place as it had started—Gus felt all his chickens roosting in his brain. Flapping around. Pecking. Doing nasty chicken things. It was awful. One of his greatest aversions in life was listening to somebody else’s petty problems. Now that was his job every afternoon of the week. It wasn’t even Biblical. It was bigger than that. Olympian, maybe. Cosmic. Certainly advanced jurisprudence: punishment during the crime.
Or maybe he was judging himself too harshly. He was hardly in the ranks of the Great Pretenders—no Elmer Gantry he; not even a Jimmy Swaggart. Looking alternately at Stephanie’s robin’s egg-blue eyes and five-thousand-dollar Chiclet teeth, Gus reflected how he could scarcely even claim to be a faker.
You could be a de facto Man of God in the Army, ad-libbing a prayer for a young man in your command hit by a tank during a snowstorm, bleeding in your arms with his ribs sticking out of his chest, without having so much as a fake diploma from the PTL Club. It was simply that you chose to minister. That’s all Gus was doing. He was choosing to minister. He was choosing to have a job, to be employed, to be an upstanding citizen of the finest city in all of the South, if not the North American continent. He was a Presence. He was—
“—but now it’s been three weeks and I don’t know and I just can’t tell anyone and. . .” Stephanie stopped speaking. She wasn’t crying, but her face, normally as healthy as you would expect from a girl of her breeding, seemed filled with grayness.
