She'd imagined they'd be picked up in a hurricane wind and dropped in the sea near North Africa. Instead, they bounced over the muddy currents toward the low roofs and thick trees of another stop in America, in the south, where Negro people talked in song.
Later, after they'd been to Algiers and back again on the ferry, a dark cloud stopped over the French Quarter and it rained. The cloud moved on and the sun reappeared, sheening the city in light. "This time of year, the rain's warm, big drops and soft. Might only pour for three minutes. Maybe rain in the Quarter and be dry as bone 'cross the river," Ed told her.
They drove to St. Charles Avenue and parked. She felt like she was speeding through a world she had to photograph in her mind in order to preserve a few things to dream on. The street looked wet and shiny, rich and old; the traffic noises were like music. They boarded the streetcar and rode all the way to Audubon Park, the grand old houses all along the way stark white against the deep green of the sprawling magnolias and live oaks, the fan palms and philodendrons, the pond cypress and willows, amid splashes of color so vibrant she stared out of the open side of the streetcar, the bell clanging and the car lurching, like a child at Christmas gazing into toy-filled windows. The green cooled everything, held the sun at bay. Ed took her hand when they stepped down from the streetcar and kept holding it when they walked through Audubon Park. He leaned her against the rough bark of a live oak and kissed her in broad daylight. She looked up through the branches, the light of the sky in small patterns coming through the leaves; she reached for him and fell right into his chest, holding onto him for all she was worth. The precious day was coming to an end.
They walked toward Tulane and Loyola under the shade of the giant trees on St. Charles Avenue, then boarded the trolley for the ride back to Ed's car.
"That woman, the opera singer, Sophie Lewis, talked about a place called Storyville. You know it?" The name alone set her adrift. "Said her father owned property."
"Fancy houses of prostitution. Jelly Roll Morton came up through there. Louis Armstrong, too."
"Are the houses still there?" She stalled their departure for Mississippi.
"No, no. It's all gone. He maybe owned cribs, places where black women worked. They had a few black women in the big houses, exotics. They even had one black woman owned one of the fanciest houses in Storyville. I'll drive you by where it used to be."
And he did. Back through the French Quarter, Rampart Street, the Treme, as he called it, St. Bernard Avenue and on to Gentilly, the city glossed by because she couldn't focus on leaving it, on going back to the harsh, sand-grit world of Pineyville.
Most of the ride back, she couldn't remember. She dozed all the way to Mississippi and had no dreams of death.
20
Shuck had become a junkie for Mississippi news. In the low light at the back of the Royal Gardens, he foraged through the Detroit News, the Michigan Chronicle, and his jet magazine, searching for any mention of Mississippi. He checked his watch for the start of the six o'clock news on television. Seemed like every time he turned it on, somebody else was dead. A president, four little girls in a church, a Negro man walking to his front door, a crazy white man walking down a road alone in Alabama with a sign protesting segregation. Now it was those three boys.
The regulars came in and took their seats, Millicent and Iris at the bar fanning themselves with folded pieces of paper though the air conditioner chugged and the ceiling fans whirled. Shuck nodded to them, his eyes seeing them but his mind unable to focus on them.
Rodney and Chink lumbered in, sweat trickling down their faces, looking more like the tail end of a chain gang than two men with good jobs at the General Motors plant. Posey had their drinks ready before they settled in at their table just beyond the bar; he put in lots of ice, automatically gave every customer ice water, kept the ice machine on all day until the sound of the cubes clunking down into the refrigerator and the new water pouring into the ice-maker became part of the tracks of sound in the Royal Gardens. Shuck grunted towards Chink and Rodney, then his eyes glazed. If the government had any backbone, it would've protected those children from jump street. That was the thought on everyone's mind.
Posey went to the big Wurlitzer and clattered in the coins to play the music Shuck loved, Ellington and Basie, Sinatra and Vaughn, and always Dakota Staton-steering clear of Billie Holiday because her voice revealed too much of what everyone hoped to forget. In the middle of Dakota Staton singing "Broadway," Shuck caught his own distracted face in the bar mirror, mumbled to Posey, "Be back later on," and walked by Chink and Rodney's table, their heads slow-turning to watch him go, behind Iris and Millicent at the bar, who had words ready for him but something in his face caught them, stopped them from speaking. He was gone.
Shuck drove all over the city like an angler looking for a catch on a wide still lake. Quiet. He made his way to the old neighborhood, turned onto Milford, a kind of West Side main street leaning toward decay but still anchored by churches and small family-owned businesses. Milford lived in Shuck, as if he and it were the same thing. He'd been born a few blocks from here, knew this place like he knew all the ways a number could be played, what number attached to every dream in the dream book. He learned the numbers game on Milford at the barbershop and the shoe shine stand. In the afternoons, he'd sit at Momma Bessie's dining room table writing his numbers from memory on the policy slips he refused to carry in the car for fear of being stopped by the police. He stashed the carbon copies in a Florsheim shoebox and secreted them in the cellar behind the jars of canned fruits and vegetables, then paid off the police as insurance. Late in the day, the phone rang off the hook as the numbers fell, coming off the racetrack-first, second, and third race. He covered his bets and played it straight. He moved up from runner to banker.
When he opened his eyes, he was parked on the side street near Manfred's after-hours joint and took a moment to remember that he'd parked there after cruising around the old neighborhood, passing by the homes of people who used to be his clients. Manfred's didn't post any signs. You had to know the entrance was down a short alley between two squat buildings on a small commercial stretch in the old neighborhood. It was dark, homespun, and illegal, a real blind pig that never even opened to the public before ten. Night people ended their days tipping out of Manfred's just before sunrise. It was too early for Manfred's to be busy. Next to the Royal Gardens, Manfred's had the best jukebox in town.
"Hey Shuck, howyou been doing?" Ulster "Gravy" Williams, slouching his drunk self at a corner table in the shadows, sat up straight and wobble walked over to the stool beside Shuck's at the bar. Gravy had a reputation for being slick in an obvious sort of way.
"Gravy. Things are fine, just fine." If anybody else asked him how he'd been doing, he would've asked the same question back. With Gravy, you didn't even need to ask because the answer was coming regardless. Shuck nodded to Manfred, then looked straight ahead at the sparkling glasses and honey-toned liquids in the whiskey bottles lined up in front of the bar mirror. Manfred brought Shuck a shot of Crown Royal with a glass of ice water. He'd been doing the same thing every time Shuck walked in the place for years. Manfred rarely spoke but nodded, kept a black and chrome stool behind the bar for the slow times and a .45 automatic pistol under a towel by the cash register.
"Yeah, man, things good for me, too." Gravy settled on the stool, only the top button on his long sleeved pink shirt open right under his stubbly chin. "Don't see you around here anymore. Yo momma still live up the street?"
"Yeah." Shuck knew better than to feed Gravy with tidbits from his life.
Gravy stared down at his nearly empty glass, a pitiful, hungry-dog look on his face. "Nice, man, nice. Good thang to have yo momma still living and healthy."
In fact, Momma Bessie wasn't that healthy anymore, but Shuck didn't want to share that with him. Easy to see Gravy wanted another drink. Shuck prayed Manfred would cut him off before Gravy fell out on the floor. If he fell out, Shuck would have to take
him home because Manfred was there by himself. No way he was going to close down to drive a drunk home. For Gravy, there was no one to call but a taxi.
"Damn sure is." Shuck said it with a finality that would have translated clearly to anyone but a drunk.
Gravy pressed on. "Sorry to hear bout yo daddy passing. He was a upright kinda man."
Old man Tyree had been dead for over a year. Gravy obviously didn't know about the woman who'd turned up at the funeral knowing more about Shuck than he knew about himself, how she'd stayed in the back of the church and then cornered him when Momma Bessie stepped into the first car for the ride to the cemetery. Momma Bessie finally stuck her head through the car window, rolled her eyes good and hard at the woman, and told Shuck to get in the car. All Shuck could do for days after was wonder how in God's name his own father had carried on with another woman for years and never let on to a soul. He never had the heart to ask Momma Bessie how much she knew. But that look said she knew something.
Gravy grinned like the last snake in the Garden of Eden. "How them kids of yours?"
"They're fine, Gravy. Everybody's fine." Shuck emphasized it this time, eyed Manfred, then walked to the jukebox.
Jackie Wilson finished "Lonely Teardrops," too loud without glasses tinkling and rough-voiced men and women talking and laughing. Shuck was in the mood for his music. He played "What a Diff'rence a Day Makes" and "While We're Young," by Dinah Washington. He lingered at the glassfronted jukebox, pretending to study the other selections, hoping Gravy would grow bored and leave. No such luck. He went back to finish his drink, wishing he could move himself down the bar without being too obvious, but Gravy had homed in on him.
"How's your daughter, man? She must be very near growed." Gravy leaned into Shuck, his breath like a breeze from a garbage dump.
Shuck took a swig of Crown Royal that arced down his throat, searing like it was the first drink he'd ever had, then lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke sideways right into Gravy's face.
Gravy didn't even cough but seemed to suck in the smoke and get even higher than he already was. "Man, I got a friend lives up there in Ann Arbor say she saw your daughter, uh, what's her name?"
Shuck took out his handkerchief and blew his nose. He wasn't going to help Gravy with so much as a name. He hummed a phrase, tapped his cigarette lighter on the bar in time to the music.
Gravy slumped, eyed his empty glass, the top of the bar, checked his dull fingernails. "My friend say your daughter was hanging out with a white dude. On the back of a motorcycle. Close. She like them white boys, huh?"
Shuck knew about the white boy. J.D. He'd warned Celeste all about the downside of that kind of freedom. Nothing else he could do. Young people had their own minds. Anyway, the white boy thing in Ann Arbor wasn't going to kill Celeste. Mississippi might. Gravy was behind the times, as usual. "I don't worry much about it, Gravy. She's got to live her own life." He lied. He had worried about it. He prided himself on being a race man, told his children they could find whatever they needed among their own people. But he let it go; he knew times were changing and that was all for the best.
Gravy sat quietly absorbing Shuck's cool response. Shuck figured he was sitting there scheming up on his next attack. He reached for his wallet, ready to get away from Gravy, even though he could sit in Manfred's for hours just listening to the jukebox. Before he got his money out, Gravy caught his eyes in the bar mirror.
"Whole lot of people say that daughter of yours never did look like you, man. You know what I mean? Look like something else going on in there." He got the last words tangled and he trailed off as if he'd lost contact with them.
Everything went quiet in the cavern inside Shuck's ears. Heat flashed to his neck and face. His stomach twisted, feeling full of fury like hot rocks. This was all so old, he was stunned by how new it felt. "No, Gravy, I don't know what you mean."
"Nothing, man, nothing." Gravy turned away, tapped his bony fingers on the bar top, slouched over even more.
Shuck took a deep drink then poured the Crown Royal into the water, quickly bringing the glass to his mouth. He held it there when he wasn't taking in any liquid. The diluted drink sailed into his blood like it was hydroplaning down a shimmering highway. His hand began to shake, so he brought the glass down to the bar top with a thud.
Gravy grinned a sheepish little grin, catching Shuck's eyes in the mirror again, pretending to be trying to figure something out. He'd won. Shuck slid some money out of his money clip, slapped it on the bar and stood up. His cigarette hung by a tiny piece of white paper from the corner of his mouth. "Fuck you, Gravy. Check you later, Manfred."
He walked out knowing he'd come close to crashing his glass into Gravy's face. Didn't ever want to hit a drunk. And knew better than to listen to whatever came out of a drunk man's mouth. The street was desolate, warm and still.
Shuck flicked his cigarette to the ground, then sat in the car, watching the tiny round crinkle of fire burn. Maybe it was good Celeste didn't come home for the summer. He'd never be able to talk about that old rumor anyway. Too much time gone by. What difference did it make now? The old rumor had died down in time. Wilamena left the city. That put an end to it, or so he'd thought. More than once, he'd been tempted to ask Alma if she'd ever heard the rumors. She'd never so much as hinted that she had. Best to leave it that way.
Posey knew, or thought he knew. The old-timers who might've heard it had always been cowed, charmed, and cajoled away from the wormy past without a clear word being spoken. It was the way he was with his children. No room for speculation. The regulars at the bar were too young to have even heard about it. Always in the back of his mind, he worried that someone would say something to Celeste, someone would dig up the old bones. In truth, he was never sure what the old bones really were. He'd only guessed some variation ofwhatever the truth was, but he'd always been a good guesser. He knew he could never rely on Wilamena for a straight, bottom-line answer. Her truth was always her own private blanket, and she didn't share.
He really didn't know what other people imagined when they looked at him and his daughter. He didn't much care. The one who'd wounded him way back was Wilamena. He'd forgiven her long ago, because he knew he'd been no kind of husband in those days. He was in the streets just like she complained. He was a young man without purpose. She left him, left him with their two children, and he grew up. By then, she was gone and Celeste was his. He didn't know the truth but he suspected. It made no difference now.
21
Mrs. Owens must have been standing on the porch because as soon as the dust-roiling Dodge stopped, the screen door swung open, and she was moving down the steps, the path, her apron flipping up from her dress, hands in supplication, moving like a woman half her age through the flush pink and graying light of early evening. "They out trying to find her," she called. Her eyes searched inside the car.
Ed got out first. "Who?"
"Sissy ain't home yet." Mrs. Owens held herself upright like she'd been starched.
Celeste climbed out of the car slowly. In Detroit, children played outside until night during summer. Up and down the sidewalks on roller skates, tearing around on bicycles, playing hide-and-go-seek in the purplefruited mulberry bushes. "It's not even dark yet." The implacable heat pounded her.
Mrs. Owens stepped back on the dirt path as if shocked the child was not with them, then remembered her manners: "How you doing, Mr. Jolivette?"
Ed held out his hands to Mrs. Owens, engulfing hers, calming her. She wiped her eyes with a corner of her apron. "I was praying y'all picked her up on the road. You know she just worship Celeste." The words "picked her up on the road" sank into Celeste. Highs and lows and dog barks and cicadas, a distant songbird on the wing trying to find home before night. She stood still to hear the quiet melody of sounds rising above the front of the house, merging now, not clear enough to distinguish. Sissy ain't home yet.
Celeste ran into the house to her room. On the dresser, Shuck and Billy caught in a calm
, ease on their faces, in their sloping arms, Shuck smiling with his eyes, head cocked to the side. Her eyes cut away from the patched-up photo of Wilamena and Cyril Atwood. Poor Mr. Atwood. In the cracked mirror, her face already showed the distortion of another bad dream moving forward, devouring every good thing in its way. Had Sissy come to the back door looking for her? She'd been off in New Orleans having a good time. She'd first left early in the morning to ride to Meridian with Reverend and Etta Singleton, then left Meridian with Ed for the trip to New Orleans the next morning. For almost two full days she'd been unavailable. Sissy, I left to mourn and then to rest for just a minute, and now you're gone. Don't do this, not today. Get back here.
Royal blue night coming, cut-out sky with stars that seemed to touch and flicker, like the sky painted into the ceiling of a movie theater in Detroit, she and Billy sitting there staring at the big screen. The fake night of the theater ceiling encouraged illusion. Mississippi was like that: seemed too real to be true, like a dream world, a movie world, yet alive behind a curtain of wet air and monster blossoms, magnolias the size of a child's head. She came back outside.
"How long she been gone?" Ed's contained, sure voice was a balm on the evening air.
"Mrs. Tucker say she ain't been home since early morning." Mrs. Owens pointed to the Tucker house, her voice laying easier now. "Ain't like her."
Freshwater Road Page 26
