Tanner named the motel Star Motel because calling the place North Star Motel would’ve been asking for it. Colored folks recognized that “star” and the little lights Jessie insisted they burn in the windows. Most of their customers were hungry, travel-weary young men who did not believe the VACANCY sign as they approached the motel and did not believe that Tanner, round as a dishpan, wide as the door, was its owner. None of them had the nerve to ask her if she was a man or a woman, but she saw their longways looks anytime she entered a room. They never stayed more than a night or two and spent most of that time asleep. Tanner checked them in at $1.25 a night on weekdays and $2.00 on weekends. She never shamed anyone for not having the full fee and would accept three quarters and a “thank you kindly.”
“Get up, Tanner, sounds like the iceman is here. Last time he didn’t ring the bell and most of the ice melted all over the porch. We don’t have money to waste, and I can’t stretch half a block of ice for a whole week.” Jessie was sitting up in bed, her breasts and collarbone soaking in the day’s first light. “I said go on and get the ice. The Campbells are checking out this morning, and Flo needs to get breakfast out to them by nine.”
“If you run me out this bed one more time, woman, you’re going to know it.”
“Ain’t nobody running you, just go get the ice. You can come back to bed after. Oh, and feed Rinny!”
Tanner knew Jessie was lying, but she got out of the bed anyway. By the time Tanner got the ice into the icebox and came back to their bedroom, Jessie would be halfway dressed, talking about the ledgers and dividing the day’s work between them. Best to go get the ice and start the day.
The ice was melting when Tanner reached the porch, but not enough to make Jessie have a fit. The iceman slipped everybody’s blocks into their iceboxes. Except for colored people. He left their ice sitting outside, anywhere, in dirt or sand or on a dusty porch. Tanner poured hot water down the block and quickly lifted it inside of the wooden box. Didn’t make no sense to tip the iceman but Jessie tipped him every delivery. “He don’t have to come out here, Tanner. Ain’t like we can leave to go into town and get it,” she would say.
Tanner headed back into the house and to the bedroom she shared with Jessie. “Mr. Campbell say what time they’d be heading out?” Jessie stood wearing a white blouse and ankle length skirt, her brown leather ankle booties tied tightly. “He wants an early start on the road. Almost fifteen hundred miles between here and Seattle. He thinks they could be there by this time tomorrow.”
Tanner grunted. Could be. She’d tried to talk some sense into Mr. Campbell the night before, but he was determined to make it his way. Tanner thought it would be better for them to stop somewhere in California for a few days and then head back to the road. Maybe leave his wife and newborn in San Francisco for a week or two and then send for them later. But Campbell wouldn’t hear of it. Said he was driving straight through, driving even if his eyeballs went bloodshot and burst through his head. “Give me the rundown, baby,” Tanner said to Jessie as she pulled her work trousers over her belly and bent to cuff them.
“Did you feed Rinny?”
“Yes, I fed Rinny, now give me the rundown.”
“Well, Campbell’s checking out this morning. That’ll leave us empty for the weekend, which is good because we’re sure to fill up the singles.” Tanner nodded. Single people always ran off the job on Fridays, soon as the boss paid them. By Monday morning they were long gone and so far on their way north or west it didn’t make sense to send Klan after their families. They were just gone. “Flo is getting started on the weekend menu, and I’m waiting for a cigarette delivery and the bread delivery. Me and Flo will get the parlor ready for this evening. I’ll air out the singles and Newt will sweep them. All you need to do is change the oil on the Campbells’ car and check the tires and whatnot. Maybe wash down the sides of the house.”
The house was peach-colored with a brown roof and sat a quarter of a mile from the highway. Travellers could see the Star’s marquee from the road whether on foot or automobile. The marquee was its own detached, two-pronged structure painted in mint green and white and lit up every night at 9:00 p.m. The house’s front room served as the motel’s lobby, stripped of all furniture save an upright and uncomfortable sofa, two wing chairs, a wall clock, and a small lobby desk with a silver bell. Tanner kept a wide black leather barstool behind the desk to sit on when her knee acted up. All other times, she preferred to greet her guests standing. The single rooms stood in a row of six to the left of the house. The doubles, another six, off to the right. The only formal place to stay for colored folks headed west on the lonely, desert highway.
It was Flo who came up with the idea of having jook nights on Fridays for the locals and travelers alike. Black folks were starting to stay in Phoenix to make a home and needed a place to go on the weekends. Friday nights at the Star Motel were for card playing, thigh slapping, and smoky mingling. Tanner hated the idea at first. She needed to keep her family safe and didn’t want all of colored Phoenix in their parlor room on Friday nights, but the women were lonely. Flo complained of never having company and Jessie didn’t have to open her mouth for Tanner to know she was cross about it all.
Flo was one of Tanner’s first guests. Flo arrived with a belly brimming over its due date. Tanner knew the kinds of things that would make a woman run, pregnant and all, out of the swamps of Florida. They never spoke about it or how Flo found the place. She was flat out with her intentions when she checked in that night. “I can cook. If you let me stay on until my baby big enough, I’ll be your cook. I used to cook lunches for the orange pickers and deliver them in my truck. I can cook anything, and I can kill anything.” After Flora went into labor, she named the boy Newt, half because Tanner slipped on birth water running over trying to catch him out of the birth canal and half because he kind of looked like one.
Jook night at Star Motel started at 9, but folks trickled in around 10:30. It gave Flora and Jessie time to change, time to tuck Newt in, time to perfume behind the neck, time to cast their muscled legs in nylon. The women always wore all black, including Tanner. That was the rule, everybody in something bright. Other rule was no outside food and no outside liquor. Tanner played the doorman and Jessie worked the bar. Flo managed the kitchen, bringing plates out to the cards players and collecting tips in her bosom. Flo wore a deep, matte red lipstick but kept her fingernails short and bare. “Can’t cook with that shit on my hands,” she’d say and wink at whatever woman was questioning her manicure. The manicure-questioning woman always knew Flo’s reputation: she could outlast a man, she took her time, she could cook, and she didn’t lie. Flo was thickset, with an impressively square jaw and roundish eyes. She openly bedded other women; the few nights a month she spent with Tanner were in one of the single rooms.
Tanner stood at the front door of the house, on the porch, collecting the dollar fee it cost to get in. “Order your plates with Flo,” she said, “All plates from Miss Flora. All booze from Jessie.” The parlor was lit just enough to see a card hand but barely enough to see if you were putting your fork in meat or vegetables. As soon as the brass band started up, Jessie rattled her tambourine. She bounced it off of her hip and then smacked it into her open hand. Her feet moved in time, and her hair wagged back and forth on her head with every tambourine slap. They would bring in an easy three or four hundred dollars between the food and hooch and card games. They split the income evenly and saved for their future plans. Jessie was going to Los Angeles, Miss Flora was sending Newt to Howard, and Tanner would open another motel.
Hours of dancing passed on top of hours of drinking and the night wound down. Couples were filing out on foot, holding each other up. Tanner walked over to each spades and craps table and announced that it was closing time in ten minutes. “Last bets for the night. Make them count.” A hand reached out for Tanner’s and caught her at the wrist. Tanner looked down at her hand and over to the arm holding hers. “Can I help you with something, sir?”
She was used to the belligerent drunk from time to time and escorted them to the front yard to sober up. Come morning, they’d be gone and ashamed. This man’s front tooth was as gold as his watch, and he smiled big as payday, not a whiff of alcohol on him. His suit was a butter yellow and his white shoes were unscuffed. There was no dust on them either. He was a good foot and a half taller than Tanner and his reach, she estimated, twice that of hers. “I think maybe you can help me, ma’am. I’m looking for a missing person. Any information you could fetch me would sure be a nice gesture on the part of you and yours. Name is Tanner Harris, wanted dead or alive. Ring any bells for you ma’am?” The man’s grin faded as he whispered through his teeth, “Maybe you want to be clearing the party on out of here so we can settle this. You got a debt to pay, girl.”
Flora, never missing a thing, hit the lights. “All right now, y’all heard Tanner. Jook’s closed. Next week, same time, same place.” She moved from table to table pointing folks to the way out. Some of the drunk ones begged a dance from her, and she chided them, “Go on, now. Go on, I said.” The last patrons bid farewell to Jessie and promised to be back. Jessie thanked them for coming and walked them to the front porch. Tanner stayed in the parlor with the gold-toothed man. When Jessie returned to the parlor, Flora headed in a quick scramble for the kitchen door. “Come on over here and take a seat,” the gold-toothed man said. He kept his hand wrapped tightly around Tanner’s wrist and had a smile on his face as she sat. Flora returned to the parlor with a gun pointed at the back of her head. The man had not come alone. His companion was thin, with a face slender as toilet plumbing. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and nudged Flora forward with the gun. “This one here was reaching for this gun, boss.” The gold-toothed man looked over at Flora and smiled at Tanner. “Tanner love a talented woman, don’t you Tanner? I’ll be damned. I come to talk to you and your girlfriend here want to shoot me down.”
The gold-toothed man let go of Tanner’s wrist and draped an arm around her shoulders. Tanner looked over to Flo, but she ignored the gaze. Flo pushed back on the mouth of the gun, putting weight on her captor’s arm. Jessie was still sitting at a table, weaponless and remote. Jessie was good at disappearing inside of herself. The gold-toothed man cleared his throat, making a show of himself. “Seems to me like we have us a problem here. See, I only need Tanner, but it don’t seem like you girls gonna let me leave here with what I need. Second problem is I know either one or two of you bitches helped this fat nigger kill off all my brothers. I’m no adding man, but that’s simple enough math to me.” Droplets of sweat populated his upper lip as he talked. “Except Maud can count and do. Eight dead boys divided by three living niggers ain’t enough change at all.”
“Speak plain, if you come to speak. Kill if you come to kill,” Jessie blurted at the man.
“I’ll be damned, Tanner. I thought that other one was a robust woman, but this one here, this one got some nerve, don’t she?” The man turned his full attention to Jessie. “You want it plain, country girl? I’ll give it to you plain, baby. Name’s Glenn, Maud’s baby boy, and I come to collect this here debt. You see, girl, dead don’t scare Maud because Maud been dead, but she lonely something awful. Now Tanner here, and you bitches, the two of you, end up killing every messenger she sends. That ain’t right. Maud took her time when she made her sons. Took her time when she found Tanner, too. You know what taking time is, country girl? Let me spell it out for you. Eight niggers minus three niggers is five and you going to pay that five out in lifetimes. With Maud. Maud’ll like you. She’ll like your big girlfriend over there, too.”
“I never did nothing to Maud,” Jessie said.
“You call killing eight grown children nothing? If that’s nothing, I sure would like to see what you call something,” Glenn said.
“Maud’s the one doing it. She already done cursed us. Why she keep sending her sons to kill us?”
“That don’t have much to do with me. I come for Tanner, and I come for Tanner’s women keep helping Tanner. That’s all.”
Peanuts shot into the air like fireworks following a parade. Flora had picked up a tray full of them and smashed it against the head of her captor. His face burned down to the bone and revealed rat’s teeth. Jessie ran toward Flora, and Tanner booted Maud’s boy with the flat of her shoe. “Salt, Jessie, salt!” Tanner screamed out. Jessie hit Flora’s captor with another tray of bar nuts. Flora held the man’s head and snapping jaw in the crook of her arm as Jessie threw every salty thing she could find. The man’s arms and legs flailed about. He snapped his jaw at Jessie’s torso until he melted into the creases of Flora’s black dress, blue and red clumps of him exploding down her front, into her patent heels. The women were so busy they didn’t hear the shot. Didn’t see Glenn’s body slumped at Tanner’s feet or see the blood trickling from his nose and into the wood floor.
“Flora, how’d you know that wasn’t no real man?”
“When I went into the kitchen to get the gun, he was eating Rinny.”
“Eating him?”
“That’s what I said.”
“The dog?”
“Only one, unless you know another.”
SATURDAY
Tanner looked at the dead man on the floor, turning the bottle opener over in her hands. She listened to Jessie opening then slamming drawers for a sheet to wrap the body in and knew that, even in distress, Jessie would not waste a good sheet on a dead man. Tanner listened to the sound of the whiskey cabinet’s old latch and heard the shuffle of glasses sliding onto the bar. Jessie poured faster than usual and Tanner half-smiled when she gulped. Tanner liked to see Jessie throw her head back and down a drink. Jessie was no wine woman. “Want one?” Jessie asked. Tanner looked at the dead man again, figuring out how long it would take to strip him down, bleed him and bury him. “Set me up,” she whispered back, letting the back of her shaved head cool on the wall behind her.
Jessie came from behind the bar holding Tanner’s drink in her right hand and a ragged sheet draped across her left arm. Her hair, usually mussed about her shoulders, was braided into a single rope, doubled over itself and secured with a rubber band. “You can’t keep killing these boys and expecting they won’t come back bigger and badder,” Jessie said. His was the ninth body on the floor in almost five years.
“You’d think they’d stop coming after me by now, Jessie. I’m trying to live good on this place here. I didn’t send for them, they come for me. You’d think Maud’d be tired of sending her boys to slaughter by now.” Tanner held the drink in hand but didn’t sip from it. Maud only had nine boys, just nine of them. If she could get this one buried by nightfall, she would be rid of Maud for good. “We need to get a move on it, baby. You know sundown comes quicker than a fly to shit.”
Jessie fixed the sheet around the dead man’s body, tucking its ends beneath him. She stood up to get salt and licorice root for his ears and mouth and backside. “He’s stinking already. We got to plug him up.”
“Can’t plug him until he’s bled through and through,” Tanner said. “This ain’t a time to be skipping steps. You know the way it’s got to be done.”
Jessie stared at Tanner as if to cut her down. “I didn’t leave Georgia to get caught up in this mess you got yourself into with Maud. And now I’m trapped, just like Flo and just like Newt. You got me here plugging up dead bodies because you couldn’t tell your last woman goodbye the right way. Now I’ll never get to California. It ain’t no more safe for me here in Phoenix burying Maud’s sons than it was in Georgia. At least in Georgia I could walk off the land when I wanted to.”
Tanner didn’t shush her. Didn’t make sense to. It was all true. Tanner left Maud one morning without so much as packing a bag. She left on foot, the weight of travel and her body at times too much for her knee. She stopped every few days in a field or under a tree to wash herself and rest up. Sometimes she found a rabbit, other times she ate nothing. She laid her suit out in the sun to dry and napped, naked, through a
fternoons too hot to travel. She chewed leaves of mint and packed them under her arms to keep her dry. When she could hop a train car she did and shared liquor with the men aboard. Men with names like Willie and Richard and Bartholomew and with pasts as unspeakable as her own. Most of them were going north or west. Most of them had left women behind, too. And kids to send back for. No one was lucky enough to ride one train all the way out, but no one was willing to hop off before getting into Arkansas. Some piled out in northern Texas and others in New Mexico. None of the men bothered her because none of them knew she was a woman. Her breasts were no larger than the chest of a very stout man. She wore her hair shaved close to her scalp and carried a handkerchief to wipe sweat from it. She kept a pair of socks stuffed down her shorts and listened as the other men chortled through stories of close encounters with another man’s wife. She told her own stories of being ran out of a house and marked for death. When she spoke, the gap between her two front teeth seemed to grow and swallow her audience. The soft flap of gum that hung there was the most delicate thing about her. By the time she walked from New Mexico to Phoenix, her knee had doubled in size and her cane was about ready to give up the ghost. She settled on a little abandoned ranch and in a year converted it into a motel for colored people traveling west. Out of the south, Lord knows.
It took Maud almost as long to find her and send the first boy. That first one wasn’t sent over to kill Tanner so much as he was sent to tie her there. Maud’s juju kept Tanner bound to the place. She could go anywhere on the property, but she could not leave. The first time Tanner tried to leave the motel, she learned what it was to die and come back. The juju allowed her to walk off but every step took a little bit of her life force from her. Walking off the motel property meant dying. She couldn’t leave if she wanted to and, by extension, anyone she loved couldn’t leave either. That meant Jessie. It meant Flora. It meant Newt. Maud was holding them hostage until she was ready for them all. Most Tanner could do, the most she asked her family to do, was make the best life they could. “Ain’t no such thing as life with both feet tied,” Jessie would say, “no such thing.”
Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History Page 22
