“Let’s head back into town,” said Earl. “I want to see how things are going in that colored whorehouse.”
“Sure,” said D.A. “Who knows what might come of it.”
“Want to get there just after dark, so’s nobody sees us.”
Again D.A. said sure, and they drove on in silence, and D.A. fiddled with the radio, trying to line up on the Hot Springs KTHS beam, which played a lot of the jump blues and new bebop he seemed to have a strange affection for. He liked music with a little juice to it, he’d say.
“Say, Earl,” said D.A., “been meaning to ask. Your daddy? He’s killed in, where was it?”
“Mount Ida,” said Earl. “Nineteen forty-two.”
“They never caught who done it?”
“Nope.”
“I’d think a man like you’d be gunning for whoever done it. Want to go back and track that dog down and make him pay.”
“My daddy was looking to die, and had been for years. That mean boy done him and me and everbody else a damn favor. I’d give the bastard my big old star medal if I found him.”
“Earl! Damnation! You shouldn’t talk like that! He was your daddy, and a fine upstanding man. A law officer. Shot it out with some bad fellas. A hero in the Great War. I’m surprised to hear you talk as such.”
“My daddy was a bully. He’d just as soon thump you as look at you, while he’s sucking up to the quality. He always thought he was too good for what he got, and he was ashamed of who he was and who we were. He was a Swagger, from a long line of Swaggers descended from folks who settled this part of the country right after the Revolutionary War. I hope my ancestors weren’t the bastard he was.”
Bitterness seemed to swirl over Earl, as if he didn’t like being reminded of his father. Now he was grumpy and gloomy.
“Could he have been somehow mixed up in any Hot Springs business?” asked D.A. “I mean, Owney and the Grumleys got a lot to answer for. Could that somehow be a part of it?”
Earl actually laughed, though there was a bitter, broken note to it.
“That’s a goddamn hoot if I ever heard one! My old man was a drunk and a hypocrite and a whoremonger and crooked to boot and a bully. But see, here’s the thing: nothing he knew was worth getting himself killed over. Absolutely nothing. He was a little man. Only thing he knew were all the back roads and paths in Polk County. He got that from all the hunting he done, and all the heads he put up on his wall. He cared more about them heads than he did his own children. What the hell could he have known to interest an Owney Maddox? Mr. D.A., you sure you’re still on the wagon?”
“Okay, Earl, just asking. Thought I’d check it out.”
Earl stopped.
He looked directly at D.A.
“Let me tell you something. Nobody knows a goddamned thing about my father, and it’s best that way. Long gone, buried and forgotten. That’s the way it should be. Now, Mr. Parker, I don’t like to talk sharp to you, but I can’t be talking about my father no more. It makes me want to drink too powerfully, you understand?”
“I understand, Earl, and I apologize.”
“Fine. Now let’s go check on them Negro people.”
• • •
They drove on in silence, cruising down Central through South Hot Springs, turning right at the hard angle that was Malvern Avenue and following that up to the Negro section. Night had fallen and it was a jumping street, as usual, with the gals calling down from their windows and the crowds bustling into the beer joints, to run against the wheel or bet the slots. And when they got to it, it seemed even Mary Jane’s had found some kind of new life. It was really thrumming, almost like some sort of tourist attraction like the alligator farm or the shooting gallery in Happy Hollow. It looked like old Memphis Dogood was having himself a time keeping up with his customers, and the lack of girls in windows suggested they were all making their night’s nut and more on their backs.
D.A. drove around back, where it wasn’t crowded, and parked the car. The two men got out, found the door open and a man out back smoking.
“You, boy,” said D.A., “you go on in and find Memphis. You tell him some friends want to see him.”
The boy looked at them sullenly, but then rose and obeyed. Soon enough three heavyset fellows escorted the large yellow whore called Marie-Claire out. She looked them over and then said, “It’s okay.”
“Where’s your man?” asked D.A.
“Gone. They come git him. He ain’t never comin’ back. He in the swamp somewheres.”
“Who got him?” asked Earl.
“White mens. Grumleys, mos’ likely. Don’t rightly know. They come by, tell him they need to see him. Thas all. A few days back. He ain’t comin’ home, I tell you.”
Earl shook his head.
“Sister, maybe he just wandered off with another gal,” said D.A.
“And leave his place? Memphis love this place, he ain’t never gonna leave it ’cept to be underground, thas God’s truth.”
She glared at the old man, showing a surprising ferocity for a black woman.
“I think Maddox got to him. Grilled him, then dumped him. Or had somebody dump him, more his style,” said Earl.
Then he turned.
“Sorry, sister. All this bad stuff come down on your place from white folks, sorry about all that. These are bad people and we’re trying to clean it up and people get hurt sometimes. Very sorry.”
“You was the one shot that Grumley hoozer had the gun to my throat, wudn’t you?”
“Yes ma’am. That was me.”
“Well, suh, tell you somethin’ then. You want to know about Mr. Owney fancy-man Maddox? I know a man might could help you.”
“Tell me, sister.”
“Yes suh. Ol’ man name Jubilee Lincoln. Live by hisself over on Crescent, little ol’ house. Spirit call him late in life. He speak fo’ God now, run the New Light Baptis’ out his front parlor. You might wanna see him.”
“Why’s that?”
“He know about this. You go see him.”
• • •
They got to the New Light Baptist Tabernacle half an hour later, finding it a wooden house that had seen better times in a run-down neighborhood that backed into the hills of East Hot Springs.
“Now, Earl, you s’pose that gal went to call Owney Maddox and the boys? And they’re waiting for us in there?”
“Don’t reckon,” said Earl. “I don’t see how she could help Owney after what he done to Memphis.”
“Earl, you think of them as regular people, whose minds work just like ours. It ain’t like that.”
“Sir, one thing I do believe is that they are the same.”
“Earl, you are a hard, strange fellow, I do declare.”
They parked in an alley, and the dogs barked and scuffled. They slipped in a back gate and went up to the door and knocked.
In time, stirrings from inside suggested human habitation. Finally, the door opened a crack, and an old man’s face peered out at them, eyes full of the fear that any black man would feel when two large white men in hats showed up knocking after dark.
“No need to worry, Pop,” said Earl. “Don’t mean you no harm. Memphis Dogood’s gal Marie-Claire gave us your name. We are what they call them Jayhawkers, trying to push the Grumley boys out of town.”
The old man’s face lit in delight suddenly. A smile beamed through the eight decades’ worth of woeful wrinkles that had meshed his face into a black spider web and for just a second, he was young again, and believed in the righteous way of progress.
“Suhs, I just wanna shake your hand if I may,” said the gentleman, putting out a cottony old hand that felt a hundred years old. Earl shook it, and it was light as a butterfly.
“Do come in, do come in. Lord, Lord, you are the righteous, that I know.”
“We’re just polices, sir,” said Earl. “We do our job, and white or colored don’t matter to us.”
“Lord, that be a miracle on earth,” said the old man.
He took them into his living room, which boasted a batch of old chairs and an altar. Up front was a cross. Two candles flickered in perpetual devotion.
“Lord, Lord,” he said. “Lord, Lord, Lord.”
Then he turned. “I am the Reverend Jubilee Lincoln, of the New Light Tabernacle. That was the niece of one of my flock them Grumleys done kilt. You remember?”
Earl did. The black girl. At the top of the stairs. Crying, her eyes pumping moisture. The shiver in her whole body, the shakiness in her knees.
“I’m sorry,” said Earl. “We saved the ones we could. Wasn’t nothing we could have done about that gal. It’s messy work.”
“Alvina was a wild gal, like her mama, suh,” said the Reverend Jubilee Lincoln. “Her mama died in a ’hohouse too, sorry to say. The word of Jesus don’t mean nothin’ to either of them gals, and they paid the price. Her daddy is mighty upset too. That man ain’t stopped cryin’ all day, ever day, ever since.”
“It does happen that way sometimes,” said D.A. “Sin begets doom, often as not. But I’m sure she went to heaven. She was walking righteous toward the law when them Grumleys finished her.”
“Amen,” said the Reverend Jubilee Lincoln. “I want to thank you, suhs. You sent some Grumleys to hell, and specially you sent old Pap Grumley there too, even if you didn’t shoot him yo’self. Ain’t no white men take so much risk to save cullud gals, as I hear it.”
“We tried, Dr. Lincoln,” said Earl. “We saved most. It pains us we weren’t able to save all.”
He couldn’t remember the girl’s name even. But he remembered the bullets hitting her and how heavily she fell down the stairs and how she died in his arms.
“Them gambler fellas don’t give no two nothin’s ’bout no culluds,” said the old man. “I cleaned toilets and spittoons in the Ohio for fifty years, till I couldn’t bend over no more, and nobody never called me nothin’ but Jubilee, and nobody never gave nothin’ about any of mine or what happened to them, no suh. You two is the only righteous white peoples I ever met.”
Earl took a deep breath. Then he looked at D.A. Then he said, “You say you were the janitor at the Ohio?”
“Yes suh. Yes suh, and a hard job it be, specially since they put all them damn phones inside and all them boys sit there takin’ inf’mation and smokin’ and spittin’ and drinkin’. It was a mess most nights.”
“Sir? Would you—?”
“Would I what, suh?”
“Would you sign a statement saying you saw a telephone room in the Ohio?”
“That Mr. Maddox and them Grumleys, they like to kill me dead if they find out.”
“It would be dangerous, that’s true,” said Earl. “But we’d keep you protected until it’s over.”
“Suh, if them Grumley crackers decide to kill a Negro man in this town, nothin’ but the Lord Almighty could stop ’em.”
“Well sir, we’re trying to end that kind of thing. End it for good and all.”
The old man considered.
“I reckon, the good Lord’s gonna call me to Glory anyhows, soon enough. Been around eighty-seven years. Hell, if it rile them Grumleys up, I be glad to do it!”
42
You could not deny how beautiful she was. How a woman could have hair that red, maracas that melony, a waist that narrow, hips that round and legs that long was something on the level of the truly miraculous. Her lips were like strawberries, her eyes green and forever. Everywhere she went, it might as well be sparing.
“Virginia, you look so wonderful, darling,” said Owney. “Cocktail?”
“Fabulous,” said Virginia.
“Martini?”
“Absolutely dah-vine, sugar. Dip the olives in the vermouth, that’ll be quite enough.”
“Yes, my dear,” said Owney. “Ralph, you heard Miss Virginia. Care to come out on the terrace? It’s lovely and the view is quite spectacular.”
“Of course. But I want you to show me around. What a fabulous place. It’s so New York here. It’s a little bit of New York in the heart of little old Arkansas, I do declare!”
“We try, darling. We try so hard.”
“Oh, birds! I never would have guessed.”
They walked to his pigeons, cooing and lowing in their little cages.
“They’re adorable. So soft, so cuddly.”
The word soft, pronounced by Virginia Hill above the two most perfect breasts in all of the white world, more beautiful than a Lana’s, a Rita’s, and Ava’s, almost knocked Owney out. He needed a drink, and to focus hard.
Ralph arrived.
“Martini, m’dear?” said Owney. “Low on the vermouth, as you requested.”
“Sweet as shoefly pie and apple-pan dowdy, I declare.” She was really laying on her Scarlett O’Hara imitation with a trowel. She took the drink, winked at Owney through it, and …
Gulp!
“That was fabulous. Could Gin-gin have another winky?”
“Ralph, run get Miss Hill another winky.”
“Yes sir,” said Ralph.
Owney took Virginia to look at Central Avenue, hazy in the falling dusk sixteen floors below.
“Ain’t it a sight? Sugar, that is some sight. Can’t b’lieve it’s in the same South where Miz Virginia done growed up. Winky makes Gin-gin feel good. Where Gin-gin growed up was pure Southern-fried dogshit, complete with them uncles couldn’t keep them fingers to themselves.”
She threw him a smile, and sort of scrunched her shoulders in a practiced way that seemed to crush the immense breasts together more poetically, as if to mount them on a silver platter and present them for his pleasure.
“Virginia, come sit over here, in the arbor.”
They sat. Gin-gin’s second winky arrived. Gulp!
“Another, Ralph.”
“Yes, boss.”
“Now Virginia, I suspect you have a message for me.”
“Oh, Owney, you don’t miss trick one, do you, honey?” She touched his leg and flashed a mouthful of teeth at him. He vowed that he’d have two of the best gals sent over from the best house tonight, and drown in flesh.
“Well,” she said primly, “Ben is worried that …” and off she went, explaining how Ben worried that Owney would take offense at his, Ben’s, plans in the desert, exactly as Ben had laid it out for her, with a few breathless giggles, and a few fleshy quivers of the mighty boobs thrown in here and there for emphasis.
“The thought”—Owney laughed when she was done—“that I would take offense at anything Ben did in Nevada, why, darling, it’s almost adorable. Ben is my favorite son. Of all my boys, he’s the best, the smartest, the quickest. I’m honored that he’s chosen me as his hero and that he seeks to emulate me. Why, what he accomplishes in that desert will be a monument to me, and I’m touched. Virginia, sweetness, do you hear? Touched.”
“I sure am happy that you’re so happy.”
“I’m so happy too. I genuinely appreciate the way Ben keeps me informed. In our business, communication skills are so important. Why, good heavens, it’s almost dinnertime. We’ll dine at the Southern. There’s a most amusing fellow you’ll meet, a business associate of mine.”
“Sugar, I can’t wait. But can I run to the ladies’ first?”
“Why of course, my darling. Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
She tottered off on her heels, that body that seemed to have stepped off a Liberator fuselage only barely shielded by the artful languor of her gown, her flesh undulating underneath its strictures.
Owney tried to think. He had no buzz on because his own martini was pure spring water. What does this mean? What is going on? What is the hidden message?
“Why, Owney. Why Owney, what on earth is this?”
Owney rose, walked in to see Virginia standing awestruck in front of his Braque.
“You didn’t see that the last time, Virginia?”
“No, I was trying to make time with Alan Ladd to get a picture.”
“Well, then, my dear, that is art.”
<
br /> “There’s something about it,” she said.
“Ben said it reminded him of Newark.”
Virginia burst out with a laugh so spontaneous it shook him.
“That silly!” she said. “That boy don’t know a thing.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“Why’s it all square?”
“It’s called Cubism, darling. An early modernist movement, which broke down the convention of the narrative and the objective. It communicates the power of ideas over precise information. One can feel its power. Actually when Ben says ‘Newark,’ in his way he’s not far wrong. Braque called it Houses at L’Estaque. But it’s not about houses. It’s really about the power of the universe and how its deepest secrets are hidden from us.”
She looked at him all goo-goo-eyed.
“Why, honey, I never knew you were so smart! You sound like a regular Albert Einstein.”
“It’s not quite e equals mc squared, but in its way it’s an equally radical supposition, eh?”
He stood there, feeling the pride he drew from the picture. Knowing its secrets made him feel ineffably superior. None of the square Johns from the Hot Springs business community who frequented his soirees had an iota’s worth of knowledge about this thing. At $75,000 it had been cheap for that thrill alone.
“Houses at L’Estaque,” she repeated. “Ain’t that a toot!”
43
It was too hot for gardening—it was darned near too hot for anything!—but Junie wasn’t the sort to be stopped by a little heat. So out she went, the baby huge inside her and kicking, her feelings a little woozy, but nevertheless determined.
Arkansas was not rose country. You couldn’t get a good rose, at least not here, on this flat plain with its half-buried tubes of homes and no clouds in the sky and the sun hammering down, somehow bleeding the day of color. She hadn’t even tried roses. She knew roses would fail in so much direct sunlight.
Hot Springs (Earl Swagger) Page 33
