Chapter Twenty
From a transcript of an interview with LTC Myra Drayer, WAC, (ret), dated February 16th, 1996. It is noted that the interview was for background material for a magazine article on Bayou Billy AKA William Douglas McCall.
The interviewer was Stillman Floyd, a biographer interested in William Douglas McCall and who consequently published a tome on McCall’s life through a university press in limited edition.
Mr. Floyd’s notes indicate that Mrs. Drayer was ninety-six years old at the time and a resident of a full-time care facility in Houston, Texas. She has since passed away via natural causes and Mr. Floyd’s papers were donated to the University of Arizona’s library and historical archive:
Floyd: I understand you were acquainted with William Douglas McCall, also dubbed Bayou Billy.
Drayer: Good God, you don’t really want to talk about him. You’d think I didn’t have an interesting life. I was a nurse in WWI, you know. I saw more action in France than on a Friday night at a lover’s lane. I served in WWII as well, but I was getting a bit long in the tooth and they initially raised their eyebrows at me. But my children had grown by that time, and they let me back in. Ultimately, I became a lieutenant colonel, and spent considerable time in North Africa and in Italy. They needed good nurses and they certainly needed those with a competent head on their shoulders. I got shot once. I dug the bullet out myself without any pain relief. Wasn’t a doctor to be found around those parts. All men and all cowards, the lot of them. Oh, for Pete’s sake, I see the way you’re looking at me. All right, yes, I was acquainted with Bayou Billy also known as William Douglas McCall.
Floyd: Yes, thank you, ma’am. I appreciate your war time service. I haven’t had many occasions to meet a veteran of both world wars. It is most impressive.
Drayer: Oh, save it for the funny pages, professor. You don’t care a lick about what Myra T. Drayer nee Bradley did in dubya-dubya one, or two for that matter. We’re a dying breed, you know. Come a day when there won’t be one of us left alive and folks will be saying, ‘I guess I should have asked about her history while she was alive,’ and ‘Oh, how I regret not talking to her about her experiences in the two world wars.’ A paltry, puny, piddling pile of putrefied poppycock, if you want my opinion. (Pause.) You want to know how I knew Billy.
Floyd: Yes, ma’am.
Drayer: I was twenty years old. He was twenty or twenty one. I had served my brief albeit exciting time in France before the war ended. I was only seventeen when I went across the big puddle to a place full of gunfire and the stench of mustard gas. There are things they use in this very hospital that make me remember times in The Great War that I thought I’d forgotten. The smell of aesthesia triggers a memory that makes my stomach go as cold as an arctic ice cube. Yes, yes, I’m getting to the damnable point, if you’ll be patient, poindexter.
Floyd: Take your time, ma’am.
Drayer: I’m not sure if I like the way you’re saying, ‘ma’am.’ It rather sounds as if you’re using it as a metaphoric vulgarity. You know, when you really want to be saying something else but society dictates you cannot. I do that frequently when speaking to my late husband. He certainly can’t run away when he’s buried under six feet of dirt. It is my concerted judgment that had he known I would visit his graveside every Friday and speak thusly to him, that he would have flown to Mexico and drowned himself in a raging hurricane in order to prevent my close access to his remains. A pity. For him, that is.
Floyd: I-uh-I meant no disrespect, muh, I mean, Mrs. Drayer.
Drayer: See that you don’t, Mr. Floyd. I may be ninety-six but I haven’t forgotten how to kill a man by smashing fragments of his nasal bones into his brain using the flat of my hand. The trick is an upward motion using the ball of the palm. Even an elderly, half senile, decrepitly retired nurse such as myself would be able to accomplish the deed, given half an opportunity. Would you like me to demonstrate, sir?
Floyd: No, Mrs. Drayer.
Drayer: I didn’t think so. Back to Bayou Billy, then. When I returned to my native Louisiana in 1918, I set about working in a hospital in New Orleans. It was my calling, you see, and it spoke to me mightily. The nursing supervisor was most impressed with my wartime record. Around two years later, Mr. Bayou Billy, also called William Douglas McCall, came into the hospital with several broken bones and a collapsed lung. He spent a week in the infirmary. I also believe he never paid a dime of his bill. The dirty reprobate. I suppose the statute of limitations would have run out on collecting those monies owed.
Floyd: I believe you’re correct, Mrs. Drayer.
Drayer: Perhaps you should go back to ma’am, Mr. Floyd. Mrs. Drayer sounds somewhat worse coming from your snide lips.
Floyd: Yes, ma’am.
Drayer: That’s better. Where was I? Oh, yes. Billy came into Ward Seven. That was the hospital’s ward for patients who weren’t critically injured and those who were obviously lacking financial means. (Clicks tongue.) In 1920, the hospital would have taken goats and cows in trade for debt. But I doubt Billy even tried to recompense the institution.
Floyd: Do you know what happened to Bayou Billy that caused him to be injured?
Drayer: Billy alleged that he had been set upon by villainous types and robbed at the point of a gun. I believe his story was fictitious. Given what we know about the infamous Bayou Billy, it is more likely that his ass was toasted by someone from whom he attempted to steal.
Floyd: That’s a likely summation, ma’am. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard it put like that, before.
Drayer: My granddaughter is a Marine major. She served in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the light side of Iraq. Getting one’s ass toasted is the phrase she uses in reference to the Iraqi army.
Floyd: An apt description.
Drayer: Her mother was a civilian. No spitfire in that one. But my granddaughter, ah, a credit to the blood. However, we were speaking of despicable Bayou Billy, the so-called folk hero of the thirties. (Snort.) I am fairly confident that anything Billy did that could be described as heroic was witnessed by either an idiot or an individual in desperate need of an optometrist.
Floyd: You weren’t impressed with Billy, then?
Drayer: Certainly not. He tried to accost the candy stripers, even while he was confined to his bed and barely able to gasp out a breath. I was forced to have orderlies restrain him. And we increased his medication so that he was barely conscious.
Floyd: You gave him more medication and you had him strapped to the bed?
Drayer: Morphine, as I recall. It made it much easier for the various nurses. Oh, the doctors could have cared less. They were men, of course, and good for little. They didn’t even pay attention to the leather straps. And as Billy recovered we restricted his dosage until he was clean again. Oh, what a terrible mouth on that one. He was the epitome of what the term, misogynist, means. He simply had no use for the female as a species, other than to use them for his own crass and deviant purposes. When he was finally allowed to leave, he was so angry with me in particular that he attempted to molest me.
Floyd: Billy attacked you?
Drayer: He tried to, anyway.
Floyd: What happened?
Drayer: The wretched simpleton assumed that since I was a mere female that I would pose no threat to his heated assault. Of course, Billy was very much incorrect in his assumption. (Pause.) Did I mention that in my time in WWI, I spent hours in the company of an interesting Australian captain?
Floyd: No, ma’am.
Drayer: Oh, go on, saucebox, I haven’t forgotten the direction of the conversation. His name was Drake. Donald Drake. A very fine specimen of a man. Not completely ineffectual like most men. Captain Drake was very well versed in a unique form of fighting, a sort of Asian wrestling. He called it Chinese Fist Fighting. We spent many hours in a French parliament building, doing that very thing. He taught many very intriguing movements until I could toss him over my shoulder with very little effort. And Captain Drake was a big man, ov
er two hundred pounds of pure Australian maleness. Well, he taught me other things too, of course. Sadly, he was killed in the Hundred Days Offensive by a German sniper. A sincere loss to mankind.
Floyd: You mean, he instructed you in…karate?
Drayer: They didn’t call it that, then. Oh, Lord, Americans didn’t even know about it, really. However, it was most useful. Especially with those Rangers in North Africa. Opened their little eyes. They thought a middle aged woman such as I was, all five feet two inches of me, couldn’t even scratch one of them. (Chuckles.) When Mr. Bayou Billy proceeded to come at me, I stopped him. Very effectively. As the doctor was setting his broken clavicle and arm, his invectives truly showed him to be quite the virulent animal that he was. Still is, as you’ve said. Truly, I would have thought someone with less patience and Christianity would have slit his throat by now. No, I gather you know that Bayou Billy hated women, all women, and well, women such as myself, he especially detested.
Floyd: (Clears throat.) Yes, ma’am. I’m beginning to see that.
The Present
Wednesday, July 19th
Sawdust City, Texas
There was nothing like thorough, backbreaking exercise and a well-played round of devious transgressions to make a man sleep soundly. That was Pascal Waterford’s resolute assessment. After getting no sleep on Monday night, hauling Bayou Billy’s body around in a freezer well into Tuesday morning, washing the evidence off Thaddeus Worth’s truck, playing stupid with the local chiefs of police and Ophelia Rector, figuring out that Don Swancott was a cheating, no good, piece of pond scum, and finally stealing the body back from two of the Rector children, all of which was followed by a meticulous destruction of varied evidence, he collapsed gleefully into his bed. Then, he woke up on Wednesday morning feeling like a million bucks. As a matter of fact, it felt like he had been snuggled in the warm embrace of a loving soul all night long.
There was a pleasant smell in the air. Pascal sniffed exaggeratedly. Ah, yes, the smell of triumph. The smell of an ass that has been properly and well kicked into submission. The smell of bacon and pancakes. The smell of wildflowers on a bright summer morning and the kind of vanilla that goes into chocolate chip cookies.
That isn’t right. Smell of conquest, check. Smell of well-kicked cheeks of Cunnyborough, ditto. Smell of bacon and pancakes. Not the cheap from the box kind of pancakes, but the kind that someone has made from scratch with aromatic nutmeg. Not supposed to be front and present. Also the smell of uncultivated plant life and cookie dough flavoring made from fragrant beans. Also not an accountable rightness.
Pascal cracked open an eye. I didn’t get drunk last night. I was too tired to even have a single drink. Stealing Bayou Billy back from the Rectors was hard enough in broad daylight, but then I had to go to Swancott’s house and steal the chest freezer back. Then I had to find a new place to hide the freezer with the stiff. Finally, I had to clean my car. I don’t need anyone looking inside and seeing signs of dead guy, for instance some of the body parts that are starting to fall off. Not that washing the car was going to help considering the way Bayou Billy was beginning to smell. I didn’t think it could get worse. They embalmed the poor fucker. How could the smell get worse? I bought three cans of Lysol and used them all on the inside of my Ford. Jesus, Lord, and Joseph P. Puddlewipe, I had to take three showers and use lemon juice to get the smell off me.
“Lemon juice,” he muttered. I’ll use lemon juice on the Expedition. That’ll get the smell to go away even if does end up smelling like a can of Pledge. But…who the hell is cooking inside my house?
His solitary open eye warily examined the room. The evidence seemed to indicate that he was alone for the moment, that no one had crept inside and tied him to the four bedposts intent on torturing the whereabouts of Bayou Billy out of him, and that the sun was peeping into the eastern window. His handy-dandy clock told him it was, in fact, Wednesday, and that it was three minutes past seven AM.
All was seemingly well, except for the pleasing aroma of freshly cooking breakfast foods. No one had a key to his house except his sister and she lived in Dallas and was apt to skip months without as much as a by your leave.
Pascal opened the other eye. He was lying on his back in his jockey shorts. The room was empty. The bedroom door was open. He could hear music coming from downstairs. Did I have a blackout? Did I get drunk after all and have a stinking blackout that I will be reading about in the paper today? Are the sounds and smells coming from the kitchen that of the ugly fat woman I picked up at a bar cooking a postcopulatory breakfast? Oh, crap.
“Oh, crap,” he said aloud. Then reason returned. The atomic clock said it was Wednesday, and if it really, truly was Wednesday, then Pascal knew that he had crumpled into bed at eleven PM the night before, and he had simply slept the night away as he should have done. Unless, it’s Wednesday of the following week, and I’ve blacked out seven full days.
Pascal fell out of bed and stumbled into the bathroom where he took care of urgent bladder business. When he looked into his mirror, that smart aleck reflection was again sneering at him.
“It’s Wednesday the 19th of July, you incapable excuse for a bucket of decomposing narwhale excrement,” the reflection said knowingly. “You didn’t black out.”
Pascal rubbed his eyes tiredly. Even after eight hours of solid sleep, the stress of the situation was catching up to him. He had a body to oh-would-you-look-at-that? discover, he had to find out what happened to Gibby Ross, he had to get the bankers in Dallas to cough up dough soonest, and he had to win an election in November. Also he had to save Sawdust City’s ass by fair means or foul, and it seemed as though it was getting fouler every minute of the day.
“Did you hear me, you crude chunk of crummy leprosy scabs?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Pascal said. “I heard you. Your insults are on par. You wound me grievously. I’m devastated by your keen acumen and moral insight. I’m almost certain to go throw myself on my sword as soon as I can find where I put it.”
The reflection stared back confusedly. “You’re not really yourself today, are you, P.?”
“Well my ass hurts from lifting that dead bastard up and down, and I scratched the Expedition right next to the big depression I made with my head. Then I’m really wondering if I’m doing the right thing here.”
“Right thing, schmight thing,” said the reflection. “You said po-tay-toe, I say po-tah-toe. You stole a dead guy, not once, but twice. You successfully foiled the authorities and, not a small thing, I might add, Ophelia ‘Queen Bitch of the Universe’ Rector. And you didn’t wake up from a raging drunk-o-thon because for the first time in months you didn’t go to bed having consumed half of the town’s alcohol supply. Basically, those are the pros, you outrageous excuse for an alien probing gone horribly wrong.”
Pascal sighed. “So what are the cons?”
The reflection considered. “You don’t know if Gibby pulled it off because you didn’t call her, butt munch. You’ll probably get arrested for felony corpse snatchery and go to a federal prison cell where your best friend will be a mouse named Fifi Whoopsiedoodle and your cellmate will make Hannibal Lector look like a Girl Scout making cookies for a fundraiser. Ophelia will probably come after you with a .45 Magnum, a bazooka, and a flamethrower all at the same time. Then, finally, you blithering load of moldy, green, nose boogers, you don’t know exactly who is downstairs cooking pancakes and bacon.”
Pascal rubbed his chin. “So far, I’m okay with that.”
“Okay with what?” The last question was definitely not the reflection’s voice.
Pascal yanked his head hard left and saw Gibby standing in the open bedroom door with a plate of food in each hand. She had a bottle of Aunt Jemima’s under her arm and a couple napkins under her chin.
“HOLY Christ!” he yelled. “What in the name of Batman’s black, bulletproofed underwear are you doing here?”
Gibby smirked. “I have a key. You gave me one when you took over Jim’s j
ob. I bet you forgot.” She put the plates on the bed and the bottle of syrup on the nightstand. “I didn’t think you’d mind eating in here. I had a really hard time waking you up. Well, actually I couldn’t wake you up. I thought some food would help. You had Bisquick and bacon but not any eggs. Hey, the lady next door had plenty. She also had nutmeg. But her husband looked at me like I was Jason from Friday the 13th when I told her who I was making breakfast for. But then, he was nailing plywood over his front windows, so he’s not exactly acting…well, normally. Also, I fed your goldfish and cleaned his tank. He looked a little peaked.”
“Thaddeus’s her brother, not her husband,” Pascal said dryly. Then he blushed and looked down. “Hey, you can’t come in here. I’m semi-undressed. This is a naked place, you know.”
“And you’ve got a morning hardhat Harry,” Gibby covered her innocent grin with her hand. “I have been married, you know. Once when I was twenty-two. It lasted three months and then he left me for a stripper with breasts larger than basketballs, and I mean each one was larger than a basketball. That and he said that she could do something with her tongue that no other woman could ever do. I was a little upset and I didn’t think to ask what it was. Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been that great, because apparently they only stayed together for two months. I didn’t know men can pee with a hard on.”
Pascal, having conveniently forgotten why Thaddeus Worth would have been nailing plywood over his windows, said, “Uh, I, oh, I don’t know exactly what to say.”
“Well, that’s a change.” Gibby looked at the two plates of food. “Would you like coffee or tea with breakfast? Or perhaps you want to cover up your raging Ronald?”
“Coffee?” he replied weakly. “Gibby, what are you doing in my house?”
“I couldn’t find you when I got back yesterday and you wouldn’t return phone calls, so I let myself in and fell asleep on the couch. Then I woke up and you still weren’t home. The couch is terribly uncomfortable. So I climbed into your bed. Did you know that there’s an awful pit on one side? It feels like you’re sleeping in a canyon. So I slept on the other side. Naturally, I was somewhat surprised when I woke up next to you, but then I suppose you didn’t notice me. You looked dog tired when I turned on the bathroom light. Tried to wake you up but as I’ve said, it was difficult. Consequently, I made breakfast.” Gibby flourished at the two plates. “I bet it was the smell of the bacon that brought you round.”
Life and Death of Bayou Billy Page 26
