by A. W. Gray
18
As I dropped the quarters in the slot, I looked down at the New Orleans Times-Picayune spread out on the shelf beneath the pay phone. Senator Louis P. James’s arrest was big news even in Louisiana. The front-page A.P. story quoted James’s administrative assistant as saying that the senator was cooperating one hundred percent. Cora James had better get her typewriter in gear, she was going to need the income.
I said to the operator, “That’s four seventy-five, is it enough?”
She said that it was and the other line began to ring. I gazed across the width of Canal Street, past the concrete island at the sign atop the Maison-Blanche department store across the way. It was close to five o’clock and the downtown streets were teeming with pedestrians. A block away, a man and a woman crossed Canal at the light and strolled hand in hand toward the French Quarter. There was a click on the line and Donna’s mother said hello.
“I failed everyone, Mrs. Morley,” I said. “But I got the people responsible, I want you to know that.”
I listened to her measured breathing. Finally she said, “I’ve lost a daughter and a son, Richard. Was it Mr. Cassel, the lawyer?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Along with some other folks.”
“I never trusted that man. I can tell about people. Oh, Richard, I’m trying to be so strong, but I ...”
There was the sound of her sobbing as I looked at my shoes. Then she said, “I can’t fault you for taking Buddy along to help you. He wouldn’t have been talked out of that, even if you’d tried.”
I closed my eyes, shifted the receiver from one ear to the other. “Buddy was a headstrong guy, ma’am,” I said. “How’s Jacqueline?”
“She’s all I have. I’m praying to live long enough to raise her.”
“Do you think . . . well, could I talk to her?” I said.
“I don’t suppose it could hurt. Oh. Federal Express delivered a package here, I suppose it was from you. I’m not going to ask where the money came from. I don’t think I want to know.”
“You’re right, Mrs. Morley,” I said. “You don’t.”
“Well, I’m setting up a trust for Jacqueline. I suppose the money should do someone some good. Where are you, Richard?”
Across the street, in front of the Maison-Blanche, a gray New Orleans police car pulled to the curb. Two uniformed officers got out, approached an old man who was staggering as he walked, and began to talk to him. I said, “It’ll be better for you if you don’t know, Mrs. Morley. But I promise to be in touch from time to time. Can you put Jacqueline on?”
“Why, she’s right here. Just a minute.”
I watched the two cops herd the old drunk over to the squad car and deposit him in the backseat. Then Jacqueline said, “Hello?” She sounded older than I remembered. In a few years she’d sound just like Donna.
“How’s my brave girl?” I said. “Bravest little girl who ever rode Space Mountain.”
“And I’d ride it again, I’m not scared to,” Jacqueline said. “Is Mom in a better place? The preacher said she was.”
I had to clear a lump from my throat. “Wherever she is, she’s happy,” I said. “Your mom’s a happy person. Are you making new friends?”
“Sure. Grandmama lets me go to town with her, and I meet lots of new people I think she’s going to get me a puppy. Or a kitty-cat, I can’t make up my mind.”
The squad car cruised up the end of the block, made a U-turn around the island, and crept alongside the curb headed in my direction. “My time’s up on the phone, Jacqueline,” I said. “Tell you what. I’ll call you every week if you want.”
“Goody. When can we go to Space Mountain again?”
I brushed a tear away. “Soon. You can count on it. Look, sweetheart, I’ve got to go. Tell Grandmama good-bye for me.”
I hung up, left the phone, and hurried along on Canal toward Bourbon Street. No way should the two patrolmen be able to ID me on sight, but you never knew.
I hustled across Canal at the light and slowed my pace as I moved down Bourbon toward the heart of the Quarter. Centuries-old buildings lined the streets, the ornate iron railings on their balconies overhead. The narrow strip of pavement that was Bourbon Street stretched out before me into the distance. I had a promise to keep, the promise to Jacqueline that one day we’d see Disney World again. And I’d keep that promise, too. But for now I had to get moving.
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On the Third of June, Nineteen Hundred and Seventy-three, J. Percival Hardin III graduated from Berlyn Academy in Fort Worth, Texas, in the upper third of his class. There were forty-nine graduating seniors. The entire baccalaureate assembly, relatives and all, filled less than half of Landreth Auditorium on the TCU campus while a Van Cliburn protege played “Pomp and Circumstance” on a concert grand piano. The graduating class had voted to forego the traditional caps and gowns; the men wore plum tuxedos while the female seniors made do with the same formals they planned to wear to the following month’s Debutante Ball.
Ross Monroe, whose daughter Marissa was a Berlyn senior, held the postbaccalaureate get-together at his home. The Monroe digs overlooked the seventeenth fairway of Colonial Country Club, and inside the mansion were nine bathrooms and a sixty-foot den. A parlor ensemble from the Fort Worth Symphony provided the music. Percy Hardin got high on Purple Passion, which was grape juice mixed with 180-proof Everclear, and rejoiced over his graduation present from his father, which was a brand-new yellow Grand Prix. He danced every dance save one with Marissa Monroe; the lone dance without Marissa he endured with her mother, Luwanda Monroe the hostess. During a break in the music, Marissa took Percy by the hand and led him outside. The couple strolled along stone pathways through the gardens, talking of college plans while they gazed upon azaleas and impatiens in vivid shades of red and yellow and blue, and finally sat down together in the vine-shielded gazebo. There Marissa rewarded Percy with her own graduation present, a blow job which curled his toes into knots.
On the same Sunday, June 3, 1973, and in the same city of Fort Worth, Texas, Lackey No-Middle-Name Ferguson graduated from Richland High, 427th in his class. Lackey’s baccalaureate took place in the Tarrant County Convention Center, which boasted the only auditorium in the county large enough for the 736 Richland Seniors along with parents, siblings, current wives and husbands of parents, and children of some of the seniors, legitimate and otherwise. The class wore gray caps and gowns rented from Arnold’s on the Loop for twenty-six dollars plus a fifty-buck security deposit. The New York Philharmonic Orchestra played “Pomp and Circumstance,” though there was quite a lot of static on the convention speakers, and the tape, which was rerecorded from a pirated cassette, lacked a bit in the quality department.
Mr. Hale, the Vice-Principal and Chief Disciplinary Officer at Richland High, called the men of the graduating class aside just prior to the service. “Look, guys,” he said, “this may be the end of the line for you, but it’s old hat to me. Every year the same shit, so listen up. We’ve got three thousand people out there, three thousand hardworking folks that came down here to give their little dumplings a send-off, most of them tickled to death ‘cause after today they don’t have to support you any more. They deserve a nice ceremony. So what I’m saying here is, the first guy I catch playing grab-ass in line, I’m tearing up his diploma and he can just figure on having to fuck with me again next year. Any questions?”
The baccalaureate itself went off pretty smoothly, though Lackey had a hard time accepting his diploma with a straight face after receiving a well-timed goose from Ronnie Ferias just prior to Lackey’s walking across the stage. And a secretly pregnant girl named Lucy Martin retired from the service with a bout of morning sickness and had to get her sheepskin by mail. The highlight came shortly after the service ended, when the fathers of the valedictorian and salutatorian went after it with broken beer bottles in the parking lot.
L
ackey Ferguson’s graduation gifts, which came in the form of cash from uncles and aunts, with ten bucks kicked in by his father, totaled fifty-two dollars. He spent part of the money on a six-pack of Lone Star Beer and the balance at the Jackson Hotel, a whorehouse on South Main.
The following day, while Percy Hardin completed his acceptance letter to Princeton, and while Lackey Ferguson nursed his hangover in the US Army Recruiter’s office, the Texas Education Agency entered both young men on a percentage-of-high-school-grads statistics ledger. Aside from their names on the same TEA printout, the two had nothing in common at that point in their lives.
THE END
