“Tamara,” Tom prompted, not wanting to think about William Douglas McCall pulling a fast one from beyond the grave. If Bill had promised the same thing to Sawdust City that he had promised to Albie, then they might be in for a rough ride. It suddenly became all the more urgent to find his next of kin in order to make the process legal and aboveboard. “Tamara who?”
“That would be Tamara Danley. Her mother was Billy’s fifth child and she married a Danley. Tamara was older than two of her uncles. That’s what seven wives and a bucket load of children will do to a family. She’s a real pisser, too. An artist. Does all kinds of sculptures. Works with steel, copper, bronze, and all kinds of bits and pieces. She’d just as soon spit in your eye as look at you.” Philbert smiled fondly at the memory. “I talked to her a few times about her grandfather, but she doesn’t have a lot of information about his life. The old poopsucker was the kind of man to shit on his relatives once he didn’t have any use for them. I think her mother warned Tamara about Billy up one side down the other side.”
“A sculptor,” Ophelia said despondently. Someone who was an artist probably lived someplace where the art scene was focused. New York City. Los Angeles. Someplace where pieces could be sold at premium prices and networks could be established. Ophelia was going to have to get on a plane and go talk to the woman personally so she could be as convincing as possible. Over the telephone negotiations didn’t work very well and it was Ophelia’s experiences that when a person passed into the great Heaven above, their relatives suddenly discovered a new level of greed. Or in most cases a new sublevel of how low to which they could descend.
The legacy of William Douglas McCall was contained in his history, the passion with which he had robbed trains, landowners, and a single infamous river boat, not in what material goods remained behind after his ascent into the holy world. But oh, relatives would come in throngs and rip the very fixtures from the walls of his house in a rush to attain what miserly pennies could be squeezed from his death. They would sell the houses, dump his clothes at Good Will, pawn his rifles, dig through every last possession for the ‘good stuff,’ and throw the rest away in a fit of pique.
It was enough to make Ophelia positively green with nausea.
“Yeah. That’s a real crapshoot, ain’t it? The granddaughter of Bayou Billy, an artist. Not only that, but she’s a lesbian, too. Short hair, arms like a stevedore, and tattoos like a Hell’s Angel. Don’t take no guff from no one, neither.” Philbert scratched the top of his bald head and then suddenly dug in his briefcase. He withdrew two slightly battered hard cover books and presented one to each of them.
Ophelia looked at the book she tentatively held in her hand. It was a slim hardback with a plain black cover and modest gold embossing. The title was, ‘Bayou Billy: History of a Legend.’ The author was Philbert Parker Jones, M.A. She immediately controlled the urge to toss the book into Tom’s trashcan.
“That’s my magnum opus,” Philbert said proudly, arching his back so that he sat erect and conceited. “Printed by Double D Press in Shreveport. I’ve sold six hundred copies so far. Well, five hundred and ninety-one, anyway.”
Ophelia opened the book and turned to the first page. She read silently:
Bayou Billy is a man. He is merely a warped man with needs and desires like many other men. He can be understood or misunderstood like many men and he is only famous because of his misdeeds instead of his acts of humanism. Furthermore, no previous book, such as Stillman Floyd’s The Legend of Bayou Billy, ever took the time to explore the human nature of William McCall, also known as Bayou Billy. This book delves into the very nature of the beast, the axis of the matter, the integral part of man that initiated the launch that landed man on the moon and the crossing of an ocean with man thinking they might very sail off the very edge of the earth. It is the very thing that makes Bayou Billy a man instead of a mere legend.
If it wouldn’t have been considerably unladylike, Ophelia would have shoved two fingers down her throat in order to vomit. Good God above, it’s a pack of puling tripe, a primitive, all-defiling abomination to the senses, an all befouling archetype of pusillanimous puerility. It’s insipid proof that not only does the Lord have a twisted sense of humor that He is apt to use it at the most inopportune times.
“So you can sell these at the gift shop,” Philbert said happily. “Also at his tomb. You could a stand right there at the mausoleum. My book featured prominently. A life-sized picture of me standing next to one of Bayou Billy. I had several taken, you know. People will want to see the author in real life and I can’t be spending my time there, anyway. Billy’s real old and wrinkled in them but we could touch them up a bit. You know the things they can do with airbrush these days. It could make Billy look like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, except with a cowboy hat. It would be absolutely fabulous.”
“Get out,” Ophelia said, very seriously, meaning each word.
Tom interrupted hurriedly. “What Ms. Rector means is that we’re still in the planning stages. Lots could happen. We need to plan how to proceed to maximize our dollar return.”
Philbert appeared suspicious. “But you’d sell my books, right?”
“Of course, we’d sell your books,” Tom assured him. “How could we not sell Bayou Billy’s biography written by a prominent local author? That would be a flagrant disregard for all things logical. Certainly we’ll sell them. The folks will snap them up like gangbusters.”
“That rotten bastard, Stillman Floyd, has got a book, too,” Philbert said. “You wouldn’t sell his version, would you? It was my idea first. I don’t even count the one Billy’s ex-wife, Glenda wrote because it was pure-D garbage out of a trashcan. But Floyd just happened to get published before I finished. I was waiting for Billy to die, but the old cuss didn’t seem like he was ever going to get around to it. Now that he’s dead I might have to revise. Oh, well.”
“I think we can limit sales of biographies singly to your book,” Tom said positively. “After the roll you’re playing in assuring that the great and infamous Bayou Billy will rest in Albie for eternity, how can we not repay you in kind?”
Philbert smiled generously. “Of course. Now I’ll just give you Tamara’s address in-”
Los Angeles? New York? Taos, New Mexico? Colorado? God forbid, Italy? Ophelia wanted to bite her tongue in consternation.
“-Edom, Texas,” he finished.
“Edom, Texas?” Ophelia repeated stupidly. “Where in hell is Edom, Texas?”
“About seventy miles from here,” Philbert said. “They have a great arts and crafts festival every year. Apparently they have a large population of artisans.”
“Seventy miles,” Ophelia said with a grim smile. “I can make that in an hour in my beamer.”
“Oh,” Philbert said. “Borrow my fuzzbuster. I’ll show you where the cops hang out on the map. And don’t mention my name to Tamara. She threatened to cut off my testicles with a rusty knife if I came back around again. She thought I was hitting on her while her girlfriend was there and there was this whole…misunderstanding about a ménage a trois. It was uncomfortable and well, I had to leave quickly.” He shrugged and a few droplets of sweat hit Ophelia squarely in the forehead causing her to wince with revulsion. “But you,” he looked at Ophelia and scoped her up from head to toe, “should do pretty well with her. You’re a good looking broad for your age. Still have everything in the right place and with all the right accessories, too. Classy, like. Men she don’t cotton to, mostly. I expect she’s been treated poorly by some. She’s a real man-hater, you see.”
“Imagine that,” Ophelia said dryly, considering the impulsive appeal of hating all men.
•
Edom, Texas
The town of Edom was unassuming but colorfully quaint. They were gearing up for tourist season and had signs out to indicate touristic pursuits such as blueberry farms, pottery shops, handcrafted jewelry artists’ shops, and a multitude of other artistic endeavors of all mediums. The Edom
Festival of the Arts would be held in October, hopefully when the air had cooled and the sun wasn’t apt to incinerate the visitors into bits of walking charcoal.
Tamara Danley lived in a house that appeared to be older than Jesus Christ, and maybe older than His Father, too. It was a simple farmhouse painted vivid yellow with several different colors of trim. One could almost say it looked like a rainbow. A work shop had been built sometime in the indeterminate past off to one side and it was there that Ophelia could see activity as she pulled up to the gate in her BMW.
She’d had exactly seventy-two minutes on the drive from Albie to meditate on the issue of William Douglas McCall pulling a similar scam on both towns on either side of the Sabine River. Clearly Mr. McCall had been devious in life and equally underhanded with how to handle his affairs after his demise. As long as he was alive he had been cheerfully content to milk both teats of the towns. All they wanted was his agreement that he would be buried in their town’s cemetery after his ultimate conclusion. It probably made some difference which town had struck the deal first but since Tom Carew couldn’t recall exactly and she wasn’t about to call up Pascal Waterford and ask him if he knew, Ophelia was simply going to outgun Sawdust City. She would beat them to the punch of Mr. McCall’s rightful heir and get a power of attorney from Tamara Danley in order to back it up. Then she would present that power of attorney to the hospital that was holding Mr. McCall’s earthly remains and proceed from there.
Very doable. Genius even. Ophelia would have patted herself on the back if she’d thought that she wouldn’t look like a jackass for doing it. She parked the BMW along the long fence of Tamara’s property, and got out, stretching her legs and back. There was a simple metal sign on the gate that said, ‘Danley Sculptures,’ and a phone number.
Taking out her cell phone, Ophelia started to dial the number given when someone yelled from the workshop.
“We’re not open until Monday!” A petite blond haired woman waved and went back into the shop. Black smoke began to flow out of the open door and there was a rash of coughing as two people quickly came back outside.
“Should I call the fire department?” Ophelia yelled, mildly concerned.
“No!” yelled the same blonde woman. “This happens all the time!”
The other person hurriedly picked up a fire extinguisher from outside of the building; Ophelia couldn’t help but notice a row of the brightly red items neatly arranged and available for rapid response. Then the person started to spray inside the building and there was a great hiss of noise and another instantaneous cloud of black smoke. Louder choking ensued, followed by hacking, spitting, and what sounded like lungs being forcibly expelled from their bodies.
Ophelia knew full well that fortune favored the bold, so she boldly slipped the latch on the gate and boldly let herself in. She boldly got all the way to the workshop before the diminutive blonde woman boldly noticed her. “I told you,” she said politely. “We’re not open until Monday. Several of the shops on the main drag sell the sculptures if you’re interested.”
The blonde woman had short hair the color of wheat in high summer and large blue eyes. Perhaps in her forties, at first glance she might have been mistaken for a co-ed. Her features were finely shaped and Ophelia couldn’t tell under the long sleeved plaid shirt she was wearing whether or not they were covered with tattoos.
But the other person was a hulking man with broad shoulders and a crew cut of graying hair. He wore a thick apron with a large rainbow arching over the front and his arms were bare except the elbow high thick oven mitts he had on. Still spraying the interior of the room, he hadn’t noticed Ophelia’s approach. Then he turned and Ophelia first noticed the colorful array of tattoos over every inch of exposed flesh on the upper arms and shoulders.
Frank brown eyes examined Ophelia and every bit of her pseudo-casual attire. Then they met Ophelia’s gaze and Ophelia jumped with surprise. The man wasn’t a man. He was a she.
“You’re Tamara Danley,” Ophelia said involuntarily. She hoped the disappointment didn’t show on her face. When Philbert Jones had said his peace, Ophelia had simply assumed he was being misogynisticly exaggerative, having been turned down by the woman. Apparently, Philbert had hit the nail head right on the mark or perhaps Philbert had hit the lesbian right on her sexual orientation’s butt.
“Yep,” Tamara said. Biceps rippled and a black and red and green mermaid started to gyrate unnaturally. Ophelia watched the entertainment with a small measure of amusement.
“I’m Ophelia Rector,” she said and offered her hand like a queen bestowing a royal gift upon a commoner.
“And I’m sweaty and dirty and ready to take a well-deserved break,” Tamara said, not moving her hands one little, itty, bitty bit. She smiled grimly. The perverse smile made Ophelia think of William Douglas McCall. Ophelia had met him on several occasions and suffered his presence when she was forced. His gnarled, antagonistic features were replicated in his granddaughter, although Ophelia doubted that Tamara would like to hear that. “Are you an art critic, Ms. Rector, or are you a gallery owner just trying to get a peek at the new stuff?”
Ophelia absently dropped her proffered hand and instead waved lingering black smoke away from her face. “I’m not likely to see anything right now, am I?”
The elfin blonde laughed. “She’s got you there, Tam.”
“Ice tea?” Tamara asked.
Five minutes later, they were seated on a back porch that had been built out of shells and broken mosaic tiles. The furniture was exquisitely handmade wrought-iron twirling into various abstract shapes. A sculpture made from car bumpers towered over one side. Ophelia could see that it was made to look like a lurching dinosaur about to dive on its intended lunch. It was rather amazing and visually disturbing.
Tamara saw her staring at it and said, “An earlier work. I did a series for a Museum of Natural History. The kids love it and I get to pretend I’m green for a while.”
“Green,” Ophelia repeated. “Oh, yes. Environmentally friendly. So you are.” She looked around the patio and saw several sculptures made from recycled metals. Most were animal like. A few resembled humans writhing in great agony as if impaled on large, sharpened stakes.
“You buying or selling something or what?” Tamara leaned forward on the wrought iron table to get the sugar. Muscles popped and tattoos undulated interestingly. The physical show was quite deliberate, Ophelia was certain.
“What I am, is from Albie,” Ophelia said and Tamara froze. The tiny blonde, introduced as Kameko, groaned loudly.
For a long, endless moment, Tamara tensed up in a manner much like weight-lifters do when they show off various muscle groups for their audiences. Ophelia had an inkling that muscles were about to explode. Then Tamara meticulously added sugar to one of the glasses of iced tea that Kameko had brought outside and stirred vigorously. “What’s the old fucker done now?” she asked finally. Her blunt brown gaze settled on Ophelia’s and attempted to determine what kind of threat the older woman presented.
Ophelia stared, her tongue stilled for a time while she attempted to figure out what Tamara meant.
Tamara made an ugly noise. “Does he owe you money? Did you agree to something? And he failed to pay up? Did he fuck your sister? Your daughter? Grope your cousin? Rape your cow? I don’t know what he did and truthfully I don’t give a rat’s shiny black ass what he owes you. I ain’t paying doodly squat and you can fucking well sue my ass back to the stone age if you don’t like those apples and kumquats.”
“He’s moved into the next realm,” Ophelia said gently, finally understanding that Tamara was speaking about William Douglas McCall, her grandfather, and a man she had evidently disliked with evident abandon.
The other women stared uncomprehendingly at her.
“He’s gone the way of our Lord,” Ophelia tried to explain. “He’s among the earthly beings no more. He’s met his Maker. He’s gone to glory, he’s gathered to one’s fathers.”
&nbs
p; “I think she means the old shithead is finally dead,” Kameko said. “I’ll get the champagne.”
Tamara continued to stare. Then she said, “He’s dead?”
Ophelia nodded. Dead wasn’t the right word, but it would work.
“Then what the hell do you want with me?” Tamara asked.
“You’re his heir,” Ophelia said simply.
“Fuck…that,” Tamara said right back. “I don’t want his money. I don’t want his crap. I don’t want anything to do with him. If I could have a lobotomy that would eliminate the memories of me being descended from that walking, talking douchebag, I would cheerfully do it.”
“Good thing, then,” Ophelia said firmly. “He didn’t really leave anything. The two houses are mortgaged twice each. I expect the hospice and hospital bills are going to be astronomical. And from what I understand, the funeral is going to be in a pauper’s graveyard in Shreveport.”
“It’s what he fucking well deserved,” Tamara said vehemently. “He used every one of the family as walking piggy banks. When he couldn’t do that he opened lines of credit in their names. I had to move twice in the nineties and change my phone number six times because of that old goat-sucking barf bag.”
“But,” Ophelia said, trying to dangle the carrot in front of the mule, “the city of Albie would like to pay for the burial and the mausoleum. Every last dime.”
The two women stared again.
“Why?” Tamara said finally.
“Because of the prestige. The legend of Bayou Billy. The knowledge that a hero once infamous for his support of the common man rests in Albie Cemetery forever and more. It will be a monument to a once great man.” Ophelia’s eyes sparkled with zeal.
“Have you lost your freaking mind?” Tamara asked plainly. “He was a crook. If he supported a common man, it was because he was about to stab the poor unsuspecting bastard in the back so that he could steal his last two pennies from him. He robbed trains. He raped women. He murdered men. He tells the story of the first man he ever killed like he was a hero and my mother told me that he was robbing the other guy, not the other way around. He was a low-rent, shiftless fucktard. Why, he once shot my grandmother in the ass because she wouldn’t make him pancakes and I saw the scar!”
Life and Death of Bayou Billy Page 8
