The Up-Down

by Barry Gifford

  The morning Pace was packing a bag, preparing to drive to the Raleigh-Durham airport, Perfume James called him.

  “Mr. Ripley, this is Pastor James. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “I wanted to inform you that Gagool Angola shot and killed Bee Sting Goldberg last night. She’s being held in detention at the Child Services facility in Charlotte. I’m going there today to see her and I thought perhaps you’d like to accompany me.”

  Pace hesitated before answering, trying to process this shocking development.

  “Mr. Ripley? Are you still there?”

  “Yes, yes. Certainly, I’ll go with you. When do you want to leave?”

  “Can you come now? I’d appreciate it if you could drive. Otherwise, I’ll have to borrow a car or find someone else to take me.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Pick me up at the church.”

  Pace hung up. Goldberg? Bee Sting’s last name was Goldberg? He e-mailed Early Ripley that his trip had been delayed and that he would be in touch soon; then he cancelled his flight reservation. Before leaving the cottage, Pace put his revolver into the top drawer of his desk and locked it.

  “Mama,” he said, “you most probably won’t be surprised to know that the world is still plenty weird on top, just as you left it.”

  The moment Pace’s Pathfinder slid to a stop in front of Beyond God and the Devil Disciples of Lazarus, Perfume James came out, wearing a long, beaver coat with a hood, which she wore up over her head. A wet snow was blowing in.

  “I saw you out the window,” Perfume said, as she closed the passenger side door. “It’s very kind of you to carry me over to Charlotte.”

  “I’m glad you called me. Can you tell me what happened?”

  “All I know is that Bee Sting forced his way into the house and Oswaldina tried to get him to leave, which he wouldn’t do. Apparently, he started beating on her and Gagool got hold of her mama’s pistol and shot him in the back. Twice. Oswaldina called the police and told them that she had shot Bee Sting, but Gagool kept shouting, ‘I done it! I done it!’ Her prints were on the gun and they took the child away.”

  “He showed up at my place a week ago.”

  “Bee Sting did?”

  “Got out of his Mercury with a shotgun and pointed it at my front door.”

  “Did he shoot?”

  “No, just stood there, holding it. To warn me, I guess. I didn’t go out, but he could see me staring at him through my window. After a bit, he drove away. I’ve been carrying a revolver ever since.”

  “You can’t take it inside Child Services.”

  “I left it at home. I don’t figure on needing a gun now that Bee Sting is gone. You said on the phone that his last name was Goldberg. How is that?”

  “Mamie June Rivers, one of my parishioners, woman who gave me this fur coat, told me his father was a merchant seaman from Israel, met his mama in Baltimore, where Bee Sting grew up. According to Mamie June, his mama was on the game and his daddy disappeared. She took the man’s last name, though, for Bee Sting, whose real first name was Abraham.”

  “Abe Goldberg.”

  “Uh huh. He made his livin’ dealin’ drugs over in Chapel Hill and Durham, sellin’ to college kids. He got sweet on Oswaldina when she was workin’ as an aide in a hospital somewhere there. They got together after he was in the emergency room bein’ treated for a knife wound. Ever since, Bee Sting been Oswaldina’s main man.”

  It was a two hour drive to Charlotte, but it went quickly for Pace, listening to Perfume James talk about her duties as pastor, how her former life of degradation and despair now seemed like somebody else’s bad dream. She didn’t ask Pace any questions about his own history, which he did not realize until after Perfume had been admitted to the visitors’ room at Child Services. Having not received visiting permission in advance, Pace was made to wait in the lobby of the facility. Fortunately, he had anticipated this, and had put in his coat pocket a paperback copy of D.H. Lawrence’s Mornings in Mexico that had been on his desk at the cottage. He was up to page thirty-nine, a passage that ends, “One wonders where he was, and what he was, in his sleep, he starts up so strange and wild and lost,” when Perfume, whom he had not noticed re-enter the lobby, interrupted him.

  “Thank you for your patience, Mr. Ripley.”

  Pace stood up and replaced Mornings in Mexico in his pocket.

  “No problem, I had a book to read. How’s the girl?”

  “Come, I’ll tell you in the car.”

  They walked out together. Once they were in the Pathfinder, Perfume James looked closely at Pace’s face.

  “You seem to have had a real effect on Gagool,” she said.

  “Me?”

  “Yes. She told me that she wants to stay with you until her father gets out of prison. She says you made her good grilled cheese sandwiches.”

  Pace smiled. “I did. Twice.”

  “I told her that probably would not be possible, at least not for a while.”

  “What are they going to do with her?”

  “Send her to a juvenile detention center for six months, maybe a year. After that, she’ll go into foster care. I doubt that Oswaldina will ever be allowed to have custody of her daughter again. You could apply to be a foster parent.”

  Pace shook his head. “I’m too old. She’ll need a good family, a father and a mother, other kids, to take care of her.”

  “I remember what you said to me at the church, about how you believed I was the first woman you could love completely and without reservation. Did you really mean it?”

  “Yes, pastor, but I realized afterward how inappropriate it was, that I had doubtless offended you.”

  “You didn’t offend me, quite the opposite. I was surprised, of course. That’s a dangerous thing to tell a woman, any woman, but especially a whore who has found redemption.”

  Pace suddenly felt the cold. He started the engine and turned on the heater.

  “Do you regret having said it?”

  “No, I was sincere. I surprised myself.”

  “I can see I’ve embarrassed you, Mr. Ripley. I’m sorry.”

  “Can you call me Pace?”

  She reached over and took both of his hands in hers.

  “Yes, and when we’re alone together, you call me Perfume.”

  Little pieces of ice were bouncing off of the windshield. Perfume tightened her grip on his hands.

  “Pace,” she said, “have you ever in your three score and ten had a woman with seven gold teeth?”

  14

  On Easter Sunday, a tornado tore through Bug Town and destroyed the Beyond God and the Devil building. Inside the church at the time were Pastor Perfume James and a dozen of her parishioners, early arrivals for the sacred day’s service. As darkness descended and the unearthly howling increased, the thirteen women prayed for the twister to miss Bug Town and Bay St. Clement, believing as they did so that even if they were taken in the whirlwind, as Disciples of Lazarus they would rise again. The pastor and nine of the others gathered in a close circle in the center of the room died when the walls collapsed and the roof fell in on them.

  Pace and Perfume had three good months together. He was in his cottage when the storm arrived. After he heard on the radio that the tornado had made a direct hit on Bug Town, he called the church but there was no response. When Perfume did not answer her cell phone, either, Pace could only hope that the Disciples of Lazarus would be justified in their faith.

  During his time with Perfume James, Pace did not have much to do with her church. Perfume told Pace it was not necessary that he believe as she did, that it was enough if he had confidence in her ability to improve people’s lives and inspire them to do the same. At Perfume’s funeral, Pace spied Oswaldina on the fringe of mourners
but did not speak to her. Mamie June Rivers, one of the three survivors of the church’s destruction, was at the graveside. She told Pace that the pastor had spoken to her often of him and considered Pace to be further confirmation and living proof of her own salvation.

  “I loved her,” Pace said.

  “We all did,” said Mamie June Rivers. “Jesus, too. He’ll return her to us one day, you’ll see. They’ll be walking side by side.”

  The day of the tornado had been Mamie June’s eighty-seventh birthday. It was she who made sure that Perfume was buried wearing the beaver coat Mamie June had given her and which had become the pastor’s favorite item of apparel.

  A few months later, Pace prevailed upon the police captain in Bay St. Clement to find out for him what had become of Gagool Angola. The captain told Pace that Child Services informed him that the girl was living with a foster family in another part of the state. That was all he knew.

  After Perfume James died, Pace stopped writing about Sailor and Lula. When he began again, after almost a year, Pace decided to tell his own story, to record the many unusual turns his life had taken, as well as his continuing search for the Up-Down. His objective, he realized, was not to make great literature—as if he could—or even be published, but to examine what he really thought had happened to him and those closest to him; and, if possible, to discover a few of the reasons why.

  Pace recalled that In the gospel according to St. Matthew, the pastor’s preferred witness in the New Testament, two blind men stopped Jesus as he was leaving Jericho on his way to Jerusalem, where he knew the Romans would torture and murder him.

  “What can I do for you?” Jesus asked the blind men.

  “If you are really the son of God and capable of performing miracles,” one of the blind men said, “make us to see again.”

  Jesus passed one of his hands over both their faces, they opened their eyes and could see. The two men then joined Jesus and his disciples on their journey to Jerusalem.

  Pace decided that from now on whenever people in need approached him, regardless of whether they appeared hostile or friendly, he would say only, “What can I do for you?” If he could help them, he would; if he could not, he would say so. What followed would be their responsibility.

  Part Six

  1

  It wasn’t just that getting old was no picnic, everyone knows that, but the thing that surprised Pace was how invisible one becomes. Throughout the first seventy-five years of his life—though he seriously doubted there would be a second seventy-five—Pace had maintained himself relatively well; he’d kept up his strength as best he could, and his mind, like Cool Hand Luke’s, was right. He did not beg for company, entertaining himself mainly with his writing and reading. At seventy-seven, however, his eyesight had begun to fail; he also sustained a bad fall, breaking his left wrist when he lost his balance on the step-ladder while trying to reach a book on the top shelf of Louis Delahoussaye’s library; and he had torn a muscle on the right side of his gluteus maximus stretching awkwardly to lift a stump he intended to chop up for firewood. As a younger man, Pace had been able to hoist a great deal of weight with one arm; he learned the hard way that those days would not come again.

  He often thought about how different his life at this stage might have been had Pastor Perfume James not been killed a few years before in the infamous Easter tornado; that is, of course, if they had stayed together. Perfume was forty-two years younger and knew what she was getting into by hooking up with him, but she had insisted that the disparity in their ages did not matter to her, that with God’s help she would deal with Pace’s inevitable infirmities as they occurred. Perfume was certainly pleased that his cock came to attention in her presence without pharmaceutical assistance. Pace insisted that she take this as a compliment to her charms and she did.

  It was easy for young folks to dismiss or ignore old people. The day before, on the street in Bay St. Clement, as Pace was coming out of Vincenzo’s Plumbing Supply, where he had bought a new augur to snake a backed-up commode, a seven or eight year-old girl had come up to him and said, “You’re ancient, mister.” “Yes,” he said, “I am.” She reminded him of Gagool Angola, whom he had not seen in almost seven years. Gagool was now fourteen. She had probably forgotten Pace and most likely he would no longer recognize her. The thought of this stung him. Their few moments together, even during a difficult time, had been not merely memorable but sweet, even tender. It was enough, thought Pace, only because it had to be.

  At the age of eighty, Lula, accompanied by her friend Beany, had embarked on what turned out to be her final road trip. Pace was not yet eighty, but he had not travelled in years and had the itch. He needed to go before his eyesight got any worse, or some unforeseen ailment seized his person. But where to? He’d not heard for five years from his cousin, Early Ripley, in New York, whom he had once planned to visit but never did. Early suffered from prostate cancer and was probably dead by now. Of course Pace could go to New York, anyway, but the idea did not appeal to him: too many people in too small a space.

  He had been thinking lately about Mexico and Guatemala. The indigenous people there had understood the concept of the Up-Down, though that certainly had not tempered their proclivity for violent behavior. Visiting Uxmal, Chichen Itza and Tikal intrigued him. Pace had recently bought a used Toyota 4Runner with only forty-three thousand miles on it, after his ancient—like himself—Nissan Pathfinder had finally expired with just shy of three hundred thousand miles on her. The Toyota would work, but he needed a companion, not just someone to talk to, but in case one or more of his body parts failed him. Oscarito, Jr.’s son, Oscarito III, would be a good one. He was only thirty-two years old, unmarried, and a crack automobile mechanic, which skills could undoubtedly come in handy. Pace decided to ask Terry—short for Tercero, Spanish for third—as his daddy called him, if an all-expenses paid road trip to Old Mexico interested him. Of course Pace knew that it might be difficult for Terry to take time away from the service station and car repair business he and Oscarito, Jr., operated in Bay St. Clement, but it was worth a try.

  To Pace’s surprise and delight, Terry agreed to go. He told Pace, whom he had known for half of his life, that he could get away for two or three weeks at the beginning of December. “As long as we’re back before Christmas,” said Terry. “I can’t miss my mama’s birthday, which is Christmas Eve.” Oscarito, Jr., thought it was a good idea, too, seeing as how his son had been working six or seven days a week for months.

  Pace had more than a month to prepare for the trip, plenty of time to decide on a route and how much they might be able to accomplish over a relatively tight schedule. It would take too long to drive all the way to the Yucatan, let alone Guatemala, Pace figured, so he set his sights on their heading straight to Mexico City, where he’d never been, and seeing what happened once they got there.

  “Plenty of sizzlin’ little angels in Mexico City, I bet,” Terry said.

  “As the poet wrote,” replied Pace, “We present ourselves among ignorant beasts by appearing as angels.”

  “Sounds good to me,” said Terry.

  2

  Pace and Terry’s trip proceeded uneventfully until they crossed the border into Mexico from Brownsville to Matamoros. It was in El Jabalí, a bar in Matamoros, that they met a man about Pace’s age or older named Hugo Gresca, who spoke fluent English and told them he had worked for many years as an assistant to the movie director John Huston.

  “I was the one who took Huston to Puerto Vallarta and found the location for him to shoot Night of the Iguana. He bought a property I discovered down the coast accessible only by boat. I was a young buck back then, a handsome devil, you’d better believe. Remember in that movie how Ava Gardner’s always dancin’ on the beach with those two caballeros shakin’ maracas who’re supposed to be her playthings? Well, scratch that, amigos. It was yours truly she took up with, taught me what she called the bul
lfighter’s hello, which was to take her from behind when she didn’t know you were there. She drank a lot and was losin’ her looks a little, but she was a real woman. Those prancy-ass beach boys were maricones, both of ’em; they doted on Ava, though, brought her whatever she wanted: booze, boys, mota. She liked small men, married Mickey Rooney, for God’s sake, and Sinatra, both shrimps. Ava lived in Madrid, mostly, at the Hotel Victoria, where the bullfighters stayed, and she had her pick. I got nothin’ but good things to say about that woman.

  “John took me to his estate in Ireland, where we drank whiskey every morning with breakfast, then chased foxes on horseback with the dogs. It rained all the time there and I needed the sun, so I went back to Puerto Vallarta and became the caretaker at John’s hideaway for twenty years, off and on. It was a great life, amigos! Beyond dreams. After John died, I lived in New York for five years with Raquelita Pamposada, the Uruguayan actress known as La Pitonisa, the pythoness. She made only a few movies, most of them in Spain and Argentina, before she married a Swiss banker. The divorce settlement allowed her to live a life of luxury on Sutton Place, in a tri-level apartment above Katharine Hepburn’s. This is where I met her, when John was spending time with Hepburn and Bogart before filming The African Queen. Raquelita had a very small part in that movie, as a Congolese prostitute Bogart’s character consorts with prior to setting off on the river. She told me he had terribly bad breath and confessed to her that he could no longer get a hard on after too many years of hard drinking. Unfortunately, the Congolese whore part got cut out of the final version of the film because one of the producers thought it would prejudice the audience negatively toward Bogart. This was La Pitonisa’s swan song, and nobody saw it. She showed me the reel and it was awful, though she was a knockout naked and painted black. I gave her the bullfighter’s hello and goodbye both the first time I saw it.