Life and Death of Bayou Billy

by Bevill, C. L.

  It was currently empty because the owners couldn’t sell it. No one wanted to buy the secluded structure out in the boondocks with little access to anything except a reservoir and a blooming population of bubbas. A single security man guarded it at night and a plain old chain-link fence took care of restricting daytime visitors. Most folks knew that. Folks just like Pascal. Pascal had had a short lived plan for it, too. The town could buy it from the owners and turn it into something that would bring a lot of cashola. Trouble was that Pascal couldn’t find anything that could be run in the plant that would be viable. End of that plan.

  And it still had electricity on. For some asinine reason.

  It was the old GM factory. Judging by the way the map’s edges were creased, Pascal had been looking for a dirt road that led around to the back of the plant. He was looking for a road that couldn’t be seen from the front and led past some of the spots in the back where GM had been disinclined to put up fencing because of the cost. I guess they hadn’t thought they’d need it at the time, but then, they didn’t know they were going to hang on to the fucker indefinitely.

  And the fucker is exactly and precisely where Bayou Billy’s desiccated old carcass is, Don thought triumphantly. He had his hand on Pascal’s very own phone before another thought occurred to him. He didn’t really want Ophelia Rector to get the body, either. Also there was the chance that Gibby might be successful in her mission, so if Don told the cops, then Sawdust City might still get the cadaver, and Pascal would be reelected in a landslide, despite the fact that he might very well be running his campaign from the inside of a jail cell in Albie.

  But if I go get the stiff and hide it, Don supposed. Then I can ‘find’ it in November, after the election.

  Don giggled again. Then he went to his office to make a list of all the things he needed to do so that he could royally hose Pascal Waterford.

  Chapter Sixteen

  From an interview with Mrs. Rosa Gonzalez, nee Zamarrippa, former resident of Pegram County, Texas, dated August 23rd, 1967. The material is stored in the University of Texas at Arlington’s special collections section. The interviewer is unknown:

  Mrs. Gonzalez: Oh, si, I’ve heard the rumors about my sordid life. They say I was a prostitute and they say I was visited by such people as the Governor of Texas, Clark Gable once, and even Bayou Billy. I wouldn’t say I was a bad woman. I was only doing what women have being doing since God made Eve. Well, the truth was that I was merely a good… companion. I wouldn’t say otherwise. I knew a man who called himself Bill and he would visit me in the late thirties and early forties. I suppose he could have been the famous Bayou Billy, I don’t really remember. Si, he was very generous. And very aggressive. All male, usted entiende? Also, he was muy pequeño, a woman as such as myself doesn’t like to talk about such things. A tall man, yes. Good muscles, handsome in his late thirties, you know. But his sweetmeats, minúsculo, you know? I’ve heard other rumors that say he was a large man, with a long, you know, pecker, but that was all a bunch of lies. Maybe Bill told people that himself, to make himself look like the big man. But Bill, he came to see me, real regular, and it got around town that he was coming real regular. (Laughter.) And was he ever. For a man with a puny whanker, he certainly liked his sex. Nothing little about his appetites. Mira, this isn’t going to be printed just as I’ve spoken? I don’t want my grandchildren reading this. Oh, they wouldn’t understand, you know.

  Interviewer: No, ma’am. This is background information. Anything that I would like to use as a direct quote, I will ask specifically for your permission to print, and of course, you can refuse. I also don’t have to name you specifically.

  Mrs. Gonzalez: Oh. Well then. You know the police weren’t very happy about my…activities in those days. A lady needed to do what she had to do to survive, and jobs were scarce then, unless you were white and a man. After the war, it was that you needed to be white, a man, and a veteran. But eso es ése. That’s that. I did some things that were illegal. Twenty years later, I don’t think the police have much interest in me or what was done. Statute of limitations, usted entiende? I looked that up in the library five years ago after one of my friends told me about it. Mi amiga, she worked the house with me, back in the old days. Her daughter is a lawyer in Los Angeles. Very clever girl, she is. So I don’t think I should be afraid of being named. But my family, they don’t comprende. The little ones, they think being a whore is a bad thing. Their parents, my children, didn’t tell them that it put food in their bellies and shirts on their backs for more years than they would like to admit. Then I got too old, and married a good man, who loved my children like they were his own. He didn’t care about the past, as long as it was the past. Poor Alberto, he died two years ago. Pneumonia. Muy malo. Ah, started off with the flu and just got worse. He didn’t care what I’d done, just cared that I loved him, and took care of him. But you don’t want to hear about no Alberto Gonzalez? Just about a man named Bayou Billy. Yes, I knew Bill. I didn’t care much that he was Bayou Billy. I didn’t care much that he robbed banks and river boats. I cared that he paid when he was through and he didn’t leave me with a black eye and broken ribs. Once, he came to visit, it might have been the very last time, the police, they came breaking the front way, while I snuck him out the back way. They said he dove out a back window and broke it, but the federal men, they done that thing. Broke the window because they were angry they hadn’t caught Bill in his nakedness. Well, one of the neighbors must have seen Bill visiting once or twice and was very interested in the reward for his capture. Foolish man, didn’t get a dime and moved away the next year because people got to calling him addlepated on account of it could never be proved that Bill was even there in the house. Oh, Bill had been there all right. Half way out of his pants and three-quarters on the way to getting the job finished when one of the girls in the house yelled that the police were coming. I snuck him out the smokehouse door and he took Rodrigo’s old Model-T Ford. Rodrigo was the house’s handyman, usted entiende? He used to make sure the girls didn’t hurt and took care of all the little things. Sometimes he would drive a woman to see a back-alley doctor if she had a pregnancy she didn’t want to take. He was real angry about the loss of his Ford. Bill sure as all get out didn’t rob the department store while he was there and he most certainly didn’t rob the two old ladies who said he did it as brazen as all that. But he did steal Rodrigo’s car. And poor Rodrigo never got that Ford back. Bill wrote me a letter years later, said he’d gone to Louisiana in that Model-T. Drove on the nastiest roads, and slept in the driver’s seat like a wastrel. What an idiota. Begged me to marry him, too. Said he would keep me safe and well-tended for as any whore could wish for. Aie. I knew what he had in mind was a thousand times worse than what I could do for myself. Besides I had the children to think of, and Bill wasn’t real concerned with the little ones. Good riddance to that fool, I said. (Long sigh.) But it was interesting times. How many people can say they got fucked by an outlaw? (Laughter.)

  The Present

  Tuesday, July 18th

  Edom, Texas

  Gibby Ross had driven across seventy some odd miles of pot-holed Texas roads to reach Edom, trusting only an old Rand-McNally map that wasn’t nearly as accurate as Rand or McNally would have people believing. Once she reached Edom, she had a little trouble finding the address that she had scribbled on the back of an envelope. Apparently she had transposed two of the numbers. Despite that, people in Edom didn’t have an issue with giving directions to a stranger and everyone seemed to know Tamara Danley.

  So at approximately ten in the morning, and unaware of all things Pascal and Billy that were occurring as she had driven and would occur for hours to come, Gibby found the Danley residence and sighed with relief. One task was done. The harder one was yet to complete.

  Sitting still with both hands on the ten and two positions on the wheel, Gibby merely looked to see what she could see. The house was an old one, painted bright yellow and contrasting trim color
s on the eves, shutters, and window borders. The gate was held open by a length of knotted rope. The sign on the gate said, ‘Danley Sculptures,’ with a phone number below the words. No one seemed to be about and even the air was expectantly still and hot as if a silent harbinger of things to come.

  Gibby let her Jetta idle for a moment as she considered her options. She could turn the car around, go home, and pack her collection of stuffed toy animals and head out of Sawdust City soonest. She could pretend that Pascal Waterford, her boss, hadn’t really promised or implied or threatened, whichever it had been, to steal some poor dead man’s corpse in the sake of future prosperity for the town and its denizens. She could also imagine that she wasn’t some sort of accessory after the fact, or was it before the fact? During the fact? If the fact was even true that Pascal had gone ahead and grabbed back the dead guy.

  Gibby shook her head. Could Pascal really do that? Isn’t that some kind of sin? Is it a sin that I’m thinking that it’s okay? Should I call Louann at the paper and see if she’s heard anything or would that be giving it away? Am I going to hell for this? Shouldn’t this be on my list of things I dislike? Let’s see, in order there’s telemarketers, department store return policies, rebates, rotten, dirty, no good, puppy-dog smelling politicians and finally, corpse-stealing, greedy, would-be felons? She had a sudden urge to put her own words to ‘My Favorite Things.’ But instead she would call it, ‘My Unfavorite Things,’ and spin around in a big grassy field with snowy mountains in the backdrop and…

  “Am I getting off the subject or what?” Gibby asked the question out loud and wondered why she didn’t answer out loud. For half the previous night and every waking moment since she had gotten up, she wondered what it was that she was going to say to Miss Tamara Danley. ‘Excuse me, Miss Danley, but my boss wants to steal your grandfather’s corpse and wonders if you would be okay with it?’ ‘Miss Danley, I wonder if you would mind if we screwed over Ophelia Rector, you know the one who got you to sign that power of attorney? We don’t have a lot of money with which to bribe you, but here I am anyway.’ ‘Miss Danley, how would you like to be a really good guy for people who desperately need help?’

  Gibby sighed. She didn’t know what she was going to say. It was Pascal who had the right words coming out of his handsome mouth. Pascal was the sugar lips with the slick tongue. He was what Gibby’s mother would have called a Philadelphia lawyer, although Gibby didn’t understand exactly what that had meant and had never bothered to ask her mother while she had been alive. She did know that it wasn’t a good thing, and that Pascal would have fit her mother’s bill of that thing precisely.

  I mean, I could have been the one to steal the body while Pascal came here and sugarcoated everything with chocolate and put whip cream and a maraschino cherry on top. I should just back right on out, go back to Sawdust before I’m really in trouble, and then let Pascal know that I’m not any good at this. I don’t want to lie to anyone. I don’t want to cheat anyone. Except maybe Ophelia Rector. She deserves it. I can’t believe what she’s trying to do. Oh, how did I get myself into this? Where’s a policeman? I should turn myself in, except I’m not sure if I’ve actually committed a crime. Oh, Lord.

  “You going to sit there in your car, all day, blocking my drive-way?” asked a roughened voice through Gibby’s open car window.

  Gibby thought that if she hadn’t just peed in one of the gas stations on the other side of Edom, then she would have done so at that moment. So lost has she been in her thoughts that she hadn’t seen or heard the pick-up pull up behind her and the bulky person clamber out to see what was going on. Her head swiveled toward the person standing beside the Jetta and she made a little choking noise. “Sorry?”

  “My driveway,” said the individual, indicating the road beyond the open gate. “You’re blocking it. You here to buy something?” Gibby had a brief impression. Broad shoulders, defined biceps in a muscle T-shirt, tattoos crawling over the arms and muscles like colorful animations just waiting to make their move. The man looked over her Jetta with a raised eyebrow. Gibby knew what he was seeing. The car was beat to hell and back. The interior was battered. She was not wearing Prada and Rolex, but Walmart and Timex. Obviously, Gibby wasn’t the laissez faire wealthy buyer ready to invest in the exotic artwork from the wilds of East Texas.

  “Uh,” Gibby said.

  The man leaned forward and gingerly touched the Sawdust City parking sign resting on Gibby’s dashboard. “Oh, holy Fruit Loops, not another one of you people,” he said vehemently. He jerked his hand out of the car and then Gibby saw that he wasn’t a he. He was a she. A very buff, well cut man-like she. The main difference was that she had tits. They were small, well-muscled ones that didn’t need a bra to keep them perky, but tits all the same.

  “How many have there been?” Gibby asked weakly.

  “Isn’t just one more than enough?” the he-woman snarled. “What the flipping doodley pop do you want? I knew it was too good to be true. The old barf-bag motherfucker died and someone comes to me and says, ‘Oh, yeah, we’ll pay for everything. We’ll do everything. Just sign this paper and you’ll never have to worry about it, again.’ But now what in the wide world of sports? Here you are. You’re from there. And undoubtedly you want something. So what do you want?”

  “You mean Ophelia Rector, right?” Gibby asked sedately. Her heart sank with the words that told her something she wasn’t sure she wanted to know; this woman was the one she had come to see. Not in even in the woman’s acquaintance for sixty full seconds and Gibby probably had already sunk the battleship. For Pete’s sake, the battleship probably went to its watery death in record time. “You’re Tamara Danley?”

  “Yes, and yes,” Tamara growled at her. “What will it take to get you the hell off my property and the hell right out of my life?”

  “You hated Bayou Billy,” Gibby stated with a little note of wonder, thinking about what Tamara had said. Of all the scenarios Gibby had envisioned, she hadn’t thought of that one. It was true that not many people had seemed to like the annoying felon much in life, but he had been this woman’s grandfather, not some unrelated, unscrupulous thief with whom she had happened to be acquainted.

  “Oh, Jesus God help me,” Tamara said with a groan. “Yes, I hated him. He was a turd. And now that he’s dead, he’s still a turd. A big, putrefying, dead turd. One that’s going to undeniably bug me until long after he’s bones and dust.”

  “Can I please speak with you?” Gibby asked quickly. “I promise it won’t take long and I won’t tell you a bunch of malarkey.”

  Tamara stared down at Gibby. Apparently, the he-woman wasn’t used to hearing the word, ‘please,’ and it had thrown her for a momentary loop. “Please, huh?” she said at last. “You don’t sound like the other one. She was all hoity-toity and don’t let anything dirty touch her linen pants. God forbid something nasty got on her Kate Spade purse.” She chuckled for a brief second and then added, “Her kaka doesn’t smell like the rest of us unfortunate slobs.”

  “Yeah,” Gibby said wearily. “That sounds like Ophelia Rector. I haven’t met her, but I’ve heard a whole bunch about her. None of it good, but then I’ve been hearing a biased version.”

  •

  Gibby didn’t know it but she was sitting in the same patio chair that Ophelia had sat in. Tamara put down a tray with three glasses of iced tea and introduced Gibby to Kameko. But Gibby wasn’t paying attention; she was craning her neck, ogling the sculptures she could see. “Oh, my,” she said longingly, looking at the dinosaur constructed from chrome bumpers. “I wish I could put that in my garden.”

  Kameko smiled at Tamara and sat next to Gibby. “I like it, too. You can almost hear it roar,” she said approvingly.

  “Yes,” Gibby whispered reverently. “It’s just about to move. It’s magnificent.” After a long moment of staring at the metal dinosaur, her eyes went over the other sculptures. She took in a breath at one of the writhing human forms made from garbage dump collecte
d items. “He looks like he’s struggling for his very life. He makes you want to comfort him.” Gibby spared a quick glance at the two other women. “Or her.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Tamara said gruffly. “It’s the essence of man or woman. The quintessence of life itself and its struggle for existence.” She sat down in a chair and busied herself with the tea and added inanely, “Sugar or Equal?”

  “Oh, sugar. Lots and lots,” Gibby said faintly. Her eyes had dipped admiringly to the mosaic tile patio and she scanned the soft patterns of intermixed decorated tile, bits of sea glass, and broken chinaware with delicate designs. “Is that a piece of a Wedgwood plate?”

  “My mother kept the pieces after I dropped it when I was six years old,” Tamara said fondly. “I think she would have liked the patio and what I did with the remains of her best platter.”

  “It’s so colorful and artistic and wonderful and…oh, I can’t find the words,” Gibby said solemnly. “It must be heavenly to have a cup of coffee out here in the morning.”

  “It’s not bad,” Kameko said with some amusement.

  Gibby couldn’t help herself. She panned around the area again, taking in every bit of twisted metal and trying to discern every awry shape. Finally she settled on a little piece that sat between two scarlet red rose bushes. “Is that Barbra Streisand?”

  Tamara blushed. “I’ve never had anyone recognize it before.”

  “Well, you have to be a fan,” Gibby said gravely. “You should do a bigger one of her. Just think of what you could use for her nose.”

  Kameko chuckled. “Hey, she’s a big improvement on the other one.” She wasn’t talking about the bust of the famous diva, but rather about Gibby, even while looking her directly in the face.