Red Now And Laters

by Marcus J. Guillory

  “You can’t go out there, Booger. Ain’t no food.”

  “All kinda food out there, Johnny. You know I used to hunt out there.”

  “Don’t do that, Booger. For real.”

  He stood up and walked toward the door. He was waiting for me to leave.

  “Thanks for the wings, Johnny. You my nigga.”

  I didn’t want to leave, but I left.

  The next morning I went to Booger’s house with breakfast but he was gone—as were all of his drawings.

  • • •

  The angels did sing. They sounded like an electric bass and a Moog synthesizer tuned to the key of the Isley Brothers with only a rim tap to pump the blood. Bad-boy bass slow-dragging with a drowsy Moog with too much to drink. The license plate rattled like a squeaky bed frame during an afternoon romp—the Isley Brothers as angels, angels as the band. And maybe she’s the only one in the concert hall, alone, wearing a corsage on her bra strap. A gloved hand resting on the empty chair to her left, waiting for her mister. Noelle. All of this was going on in my head as I finished wiping down my car, bumping to “For the Love of You.” Damn, there was something about her—something grown, something risky, something ghetto. But there was also something fresh about her, invigorating—cut grass in the morning. Wet and green and new. Actually, she didn’t smell like cut grass but Chanel No. 5, and she knew how to wear it. I could tell.

  That little brief encounter felt like it had history behind it and in front of it. It hung in the air after she left sashaying down Scott Street. You could almost touch it, but I was reluctant. Who was she? What was she? A taunting tease or a delectable gamine?

  Father walked out of the house carrying an ice chest.

  “They ropin’ in Hitchcock, wanna go?” he said perfunctorily; he knew the answer.

  “Nawh, I got plans.”

  He didn’t stop or turn but rather continued to his truck. He’d stopped giving a damn whether I went to the rodeos with him almost two years earlier. I think we both were hurt by this development, both realizing that hero worship was dead.

  An hour later, I drove past the Shrine of the Black Madonna church heading into Third Ward. I felt better. My plan was working. Today’s extracurricular activity was a docent internship at the Museum of Fine Arts—a nice addition to the activities section of any college application—but I was also trying to get a closer look at the good life.

  Five minutes into my museum tour a hand was raised in the back of the crowd. I couldn’t make out the face.

  “Yes, the person in the back.”

  “What time will we start the finger painting?”

  It was Noelle in short cutoff jeans, shell-toe Adidas with neon fat laces, and a tight-fitting Houston Oilers T-shirt. Some in the crowd chuckled while she held deadpan, then winked. I wanted her.

  The others on the tour pretended not to see, and that was a lot of pretending. Even in cutoffs and sneakers she carried an air of quirky elegance—Audrey Hepburn as the Creole ingénue in Brunch at Brennan’s (the director’s cut). Directly behind her on the wall hung a massive Monet—a picnic scene of sorts—pixilated pigments so delicate the gentle lady’s skin appeared ripe as the peach Noelle slowly nibbled on after the laughter settled and more than a few wandering-eyed husbands nursed sharp pinches from their wives. And who wouldn’t look? Peach juice dripped off her hand, down her forearm, and onto the floor, by design, of course. It was downright pornographic.

  “No finger painting today, sorry,” I responded.

  “What a tragedy.” She smirked and continued with her peach.

  As I guided the tour from room to room, she drifted in the rear, entertaining herself. Sometimes she’d skip or waltz, but not for my attention or anyone else’s; rather, she was entertaining herself. By the time we reached the African exhibit, she had begun a full conversation with herself. A few tourists noticed, probably figuring her performance was part of their museum admission, considering her discussions that afternoon were all related to the artists on exhibit and the work—silly anecdotes, rumors, unknown facts, minute details, all manner of bizarre almanac shit. And the funny thing was the level of detail she’d proffer: Picasso’s personal physician inspired some pieces after a torrid tryst with a blind pantomime from the Basque Country who only spoke in Latin, or Diego Rivera once urinated for over four minutes. By the end of the tour, the inner wall of my mouth was bite-laden after two hours trying to maintain the astute composure of a studious and informed junior docent for the Museum of Fine Arts. What brashness! What ridiculousness! Seems Noelle was as hilarious as she was beautiful.

  By 5:00 P.M., we sat atop Hippo Hill in Hermann Park, adjacent to the museum, eating ice cream sandwiches. I wanted to hold her hand. Other couples in the park were doing it. Walking up the hill, I had moved closer, brushing her elbow, then playfully held her waist from behind as she made exaggerated steps up the grassy hill that faced Miller Outdoor Theatre.

  “Whatcha doin’ there, Captain Schoolboy?” she asked with her back to me.

  “Playin’ caboose,” I answered, a bit coy.

  “How come you get to be the caboose? What about what I want?” she spat, although I had no idea whether she was serious. Her constant shifting of characters made it difficult to determine when I was dealing with her, and I had parsed that much even though I hardly knew her.

  She stopped and turned to face me. A children’s theater troupe was rehearsing Le Petit Chaperon Rouge on the stage behind me. She narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips. It was cute.

  “Answer me! Answer me, Rhett, or I’ll never get any sleep,” she protested with a careful Scarlett O’Hara as she closed her eyes and threw her forearm to her brow with “Catch me, Rhett. I confess I do feel a spell coming upon me.”

  She fell into my arms.

  What big hands you have.

  The young thespians applauded along with damn near everybody in earshot.

  Head in my arms, she slowly peeked, then stuck out her tongue.

  “If you’re gonna play with me, you’re gonna have to give me what I want. Can you handle that?” she asked.

  “Depends on what you want.”

  “Just say yes. It don’t cost nuthin’.”

  I looked around. Most everyone still watched our hillside soap opera.

  “Are we still in command of an audience, Rhett?” she asked with a slight grin.

  “Appears that way.”

  “Then say yes, silly goose, and kiss me.”

  I looked into her deep brown eyes—she was dead serious. And crying.

  “If you kiss a girl while she cries for want of love, you’re granted one wish if your heart is pure,” she said while managing a desperate smile.

  Cher Catin.

  “First, tell me what you want,” I said, attempting to regain control of the moment.

  “An ice cream sandwich.”

  We kissed. Just like in the movies. Our audience applauded.

  On that sunny Saturday afternoon on the side of Hippo Hill, I fell in love or what I believed to be love at the time.

  My, what big teeth you have.

  The better to eat you with, my dear.

  Now an hour later, as we sat eating ice cream sandwiches, counting clouds, and watching children’s theater, Noelle gave me a hand job and told me she knew.

  “You know what?” I asked.

  She took her time. I waited, naturally.

  Finally, while cleaning her left hand with a hand wipe from Church’s Chicken and not even glancing my way, she responded, “I know you’re a witch.”

  A prête moi ton mouchoir.

  * * *

  1. Trill: a South Park term that meant “true” and “real,” referring to a stand-up guy. Trill was a serious word, a power word, that carried responsibility and purpose, bestowed on those who exhibited the highest virtue of street ethics and honor. It wasn’t found in a dictionary (although in later years it would be thrown around like dice), but it was ingrained in the South Park idiom,
eventually branching deeper into the greater Gulf Coast black street vernacular, harkening back to a time when a fight was with fists, all pussy was good pussy, and you didn’t have a car stereo if your license plate frame wasn’t rattling. It wasn’t a New York word or a West Coast word. It was our word, our term for validating ourselves—a Southern black Declaration of Relevance.

  twenty-eight

  les haricots sont pas salés

  L’Anse aux Vaches, Louisiana, c. 1928

  Rice go down

  Liquor go up

  Corn stay the same,

  Fish and bread keep a po’ man fed,

  Rev’nue man keep a-comin’.

  Rice go up

  Liquor stay the same

  Corn aplenty,

  Black snake hidin’ under dem caps,

  Rev’nue man keep a-comin’.

  Paul Boudreaux had more on his mind than the cases of whiskey hidden under the sacks of rice in his wagon as he watched Emory Lafleur and Pitre Benoit figurin’ with fingers on Benoit’s porch in L’Anse aux Vaches. Paul sat in the wagon some thirty yards off the porch on account that Pitre Benoit didn’t ’low na’re nigger twenty feet from his front do’, business or no business. Paul could’ve been amused by his leery Cajun customers attempting to appear as though they were negotiating the price of shine, but he knew that it wasn’t really a negotiation if’n they negotiatin’ by theyself. But the figurin’ on the porch was only performance—Dixie Boy whiskey price was nonnegotiable. And how the hell that nigger Boudreaux keep gettin’ his hands on that stuff? most white folks in Acadia and Evangeline Parishes wondered.

  Dixie Boy whiskey was mighty powerful shine, sold from Mobile, Alabama, all the way to Fort Worth, Texas. It was a flavorful, smooth sipping whiskey with a distinctive label that hosted a proud Confederate flag waving in the upper left corner and a cornfield in the background with a few black figures scattered in the field, probably working for free. In the foreground, an elderly white man in a white suit with a black shoestring tie leans against a wooden barrel with a big grin. The image harkened to the antebellum days and naturally was a big hit with white folks throughout the South. Not a respectable white home in the former Cotton Belt that didn’t have a bottle of the famed elixir tucked away somewhere. And despite the Prohibition Act, law enforcement throughout the South turned a blind eye to Dixie Boy whiskey, including most Southern-born revenue agents.

  Yet despite its widespread notoriety and loyal patronage, the maker of the whiskey had remained a mystery. Many believed that the whiskey was manufactured by the Ku Klux Klan with proceeds funding the rogue outfit’s terrorist activities until the Grand Dragon publicly denounced the allegation since liquor was illegal in the eyes of God (the Protestant version) and man—Mr. Grand Dragon was also a pastor, hallelujah. Others theorized that Dixie Boy was being distributed by shifty Italian mafia guys in New Orleans from stills operated by Florida crackers, although experienced palates insisted that the taste clearly indicated local birth. Either way, no one really knew who made Dixie Boy whiskey or the resulting profit (which had to be massive), at least nobody white.

  Pitre Benoit spat on the ground, then turned to Paul and nodded, signaling that the deal was complete.

  Paul yanked the reins against the hinds of his old mule, King Arthur (a name he remembered when Clarice LaChapelle read fairy tales to his young boys, Simon and Arnaud). The two moseyed over to a grain silo at the edge of the field. He squinted at the sea of green before him—green beans. A few brown hands waved at him above the green sea—brown butterflies hovering over the green sea looking for a branch to rest their wings. He didn’t wave back.

  Tommy Lastrape, the field foreman, approached Paul with a generous smile but not because of the Dixie Boy in the wagon (Pitre Benoit wasn’t partial to sharing firewater with niggers and Injuns); rather because of the gunnysack resting next to Paul.

  “Eh toi, Boudreaux. Ça va?” Lastrape asked while motioning two field hands to unload the wagon.

  “Ça va bien.”

  “T’paré?”1

  Paul nodded from a distance still removed, burdens on his mind. He delicately grabbed the gunnysack as Tommy placed a worn bullhorn to his lips and blew a low, guttural note. The field hands in the green sea stopped working and looked at Tommy. They recognized King Arthur and double-timed toward the silo.

  Paul watched the green sea. A hot breeze blew.

  Sixty or so field hands gathered around a low-hanging tree. Tommy placed a wooden crate in the center. Paul wouldn’t look at them, too burdened. He stared at the gunnysack in his hand, then raised his sullen eyes to the waiting crowd. He slowly sat on the crate and removed an object from the sack—a fiddle.

  “Joue la danse de vieille temps!”2 Tommy yelled as he started with solid hand claps separated by heavy foot stomps, yet Paul didn’t respond to the cadence, rather remained preoccupied with the fiddle in his lap.

  “Chanse, Boudreaux!”

  He closed his eyes, remembering. He raised his hand and Tommy stopped. Paul took off his straw hat and placed it over his heart, then began a blues lament in Creole. But he couldn’t finish the song. Sometimes the sorrow weighs too much. The only way out is joy. He started clapping and foot stomping, then belted into an energized a cappella of the famed juré song “J’ai Fait Tout le Tour du Pays.”

  An hour later he traveled a back road along a bayou toward Basile, rejuvenated by the midday performance. His spirits were up until he noticed somebody coming out of the woods into the middle of the narrow road. He slowed King Arthur to a halt.

  “What you want?” he asked.

  “That’s no way to talk to your people,” the figure said, “particularly when you know I been calling on you.”

  “You know where I live.”

  “I ain’t goin’ ’round there.”

  Paul pulled out a cigar, bit off the end, and lit it, all the while eyeing the rude obstruction in the road.

  “You gonna move? I gotta get home,” said Paul.

  “Gimme that smoke.”

  Paul took the cigar from his mouth and threw it at the requester. It fell on the ground.

  “You know I can help you with your problem,” said Sonnier as he bent down and picked up the cigar.

  “I ain’t weak for Satan, Nonc. And I ain’t no hoodoo,” said Paul. “And you better stay away from my family.”

  “I made a promise, Nephew. You know that,” Sonnier responded.

  Paul quickly pulled out a double-barreled shotgun and trained it on Sonnier, who wasn’t a bit bothered.

  “You ain’t the first of my kin to threaten my life, Nephew, but pulling that trigger ain’t gonna make a damn bit of difference. So I reckon we gonna have to make a deal,” Sonnier said calmly, but Paul didn’t lower the gun nor dismiss Sonnier. He listened.

  “That woman of yours ain’t right, ain’t never gonna be right. But I get one of your boys,” Sonnier said.

  “Ain’t got but two boys, Nonc, and I need them for farming.”

  “Ain’t talkin’ ’bout them,” Sonnier answered. “Talkin’ ’bout down the line.”

  Paul stared at his uncle for long seconds, then lowered the shotgun and spat on the ground. Sonnier moseyed back into the woods with a trail of smoke in his wake. Paul made a sign of the cross, then yanked the reins so King Arthur could return to Camelot.

  Cher Catin

  When they first married, he’d wash her hair in the front yard. She, sitting in a pine chair that he had constructed from the same tree that he built their wedding bed from, slumped over a tin tub resting on the dirt ground between her legs. A jogue of sweet well water poured from his hands above her—young Mme. Marie Boudreaux—his new wife. The sweet water carefully trickled off each delicate strand of her silky auburn tresses, dampening the muddy floor below, her soft beige bare feet mired in forgiving Basile soil. The wet gown clung to her bounteous breasts as he stroked her hair with gentle wet fingers. He separated the locks into two parts and carefully braided h
er hair into plaits, never too tight. And they’d talk the way old married couples do—about everything and nothing. Tout les choses et rein.

  A month after Simon, the youngest, was born, she stopped talking, doing. She stared at the ground when he plaited her hair—silent.

  A curious dragonfly watched from a tree branch—

  When evening comes, he picks her up and places her in the pine-framed bed. He ties twine to her foot and secures it to the bedpost with a small bell so she doesn’t wander.

  In the mornings, while the babies are still asleep, he takes her out of bed and places her in a chair covered in burlap while he changes the sheets she’s soiled during the night. He takes her outside at dawn and washes her while she stands in a tin tub, then dresses her in a clean cotton gown. Next, he washes the soiled sheets and hangs them to dry. Afterward he takes her back to bed and places one end of a string of worn Rosary beads in her hand. She grips them. The other end he holds as he recites the Rosary to her. She hasn’t spoken in fourteen months. But he’s never left her side nor their pine marriage bed, which he continues to share with her despite her incontinence. He is her husband. And she is his wife.

  As the cock crows, Clarice LaChapelle, a petite young woman from Lafayette who lives in Elton, arrives to tend the babies, Arnaud and Simon, and Marie. Clarice will never see Mme. Boudreaux’s soiled sheets, gowns, nor body, even though she’s offered to assist. Paul is her husband. Marie is his wife.

  Month after month, he watches her deteriorate to a shell of flesh and bone. In the early stages, he found life in her eyes, but now that life has reduced to vacant orbs. His wife is gone.

  Paul could see the white truck in front of the house as King Arthur trod along the muddy lane to their home. She had been to doctors in Opelousas, Lafayette, and even Baton Rouge, but there was no hope for her and a decision was made.

  Joe Guillory, Edmund’s son, told him to consult with Sonnier, but Paul steadfastly refused. He was ashamed of the wily heretic Sonnier.

  “I’m a devout Catholic, Joe. I cain’t be foolin’ ’round wit’ Nonc. I got children ta raise and dey gonna believe in God the Father and go to Mass. If dey need somethin’ I cain’t provide or dey cain’t provide for theyself, then dey gonna ask God, not Nonc,” Paul argued, yet knowing that wasn’t altogether true.