By Roger Owens
[Editor’s Note: On Saturday, this book finally became available in paperback. The long delay since its availability as a Kindle eBook owes to two things: (1) Hurricane Irma, which swept along the west coast of the author’s state, prompting him to evacuate, and (2) the ineptitude of the book’s cover designer ( m e ), who hadn’t noticed that some of the text originally extended into the area that gets trimmed off after each book is printed and bound.]
Winchell Sanford Wainwright III came from a long line of men whose initials were all WSW. Walter Samuel, dear Papa, Granpapa Winchell Sanford II, and right on back through the blue-bloody, very bloody, history of Providence and Cape Cod. It was only one irritating detail of a lineage awash with similar foolish details, like a harbor awash with dead fish and turds, and every such detail pissed him off. What had it afforded them when the chips were down, and Fortune smiled at another? Nothing. His family and that of Chandler Montgomery had been in business together for over one hundred years. They were both immensely rich. They had gone to school together, been on the same teams, fucked the same girls, been the closest of friends. When he had first met Pauline Gooding, of the Penobscot Goodings, Chandler was the first one to hear that he was in love. He and Pauline were betrothed, and for two years he blissfully enjoyed her company with the expectation of marrying her soon. The delay was due to some detail or other, a grandfather who stubbornly and inconveniently refused to die. He understood; marriage could always wait for the money.
Then he lost an enormous amount on his latest supply ship, a huge, fast vessel which should have outrun anything on the seas and doubled his fortunes but had unaccountably been sunk by Nazi U-boats while running arms to the Russians. Pauline had not taken the news well. Trying to recover his losses, he gambled on merchant marine ships, and lost almost all that he had when the Pacific War suddenly ended. The government would not even pay for the half-completed hulls that lay in the ways up and down the east coast of America. Pauline called and broke off the engagement. She was going to marry Chandler. Montgomery Shipping bought Wainwright Enterprises for a few pennies on the dollar, and was now turning a stunning profit with the resurgence of domestic peacetime business. And Pauline Gooding was now Mrs. Chandler Montgomery.
As far as Winchell was concerned, the whole world could kiss his ass. Everybody else was out for number one. Why should he be any different? Joe Hook had nowhere better to go; the little fucker was a bank robber. That jumpin’ jackass kid, the passionate pissant who would not let up on calling him Blackie, he was just adventuring. Winchell had seen it all, long before this particular prodigal had come along. All too soon his family would find him, and he would return to his fate of enforced education and predetermined, regimented advancement. Presently he would meet a young woman he felt was his equal, who would represent him properly on the social circuit. Someone he could love with the approval of his saintly mother. Someone like Pauline Gooding. God help the poor bastard.
Nobody gave a damn about anybody. Why should he? Even this little bit of candy they’d picked up, she was making sparkly eyes at him, but she was just in it for...what? A ride? Something about her bothered him, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. She reminded him of his little sister, Delia, who had died of polio at the age of fourteen. She had never been kissed: she would for sure have told her brother Winnie if she had. They had talked about everything. When she died, he had been desolate. He hadn’t thought of her now for years.
James Donald Owens could not believe his eyes. He could have sworn he’d seen a cigarette. The odds were astronomical. And who would be stupid enough to light a fag on a night exercise? He waited to be certain, and sure as hell, he saw the red glow again. Some idiot was cupping a smoke, right there on deck. He shook his head as he brought the binoculars down from his eyes. The end of the war only a few months gone and the new joes were getting slack already. If it had been one of his own crew, he would have personally beat that man’s ass.
His Navy blues blended well with the darkness that surrounded the Sarsfield. Her nonreflective grey hull disappeared in the mangrove morass of the Florida Keys. He turned and tapped the seaman who stood just inside the hatch on the shoulder. The kid couldn’t have been more than sixteen, all slab teeth and pimples. James told him in a low, decisive voice to inform the Officer of the Day that he had spotted the “enemy” vessel, due east at a range of four thousand yards.
The young seaman opened his mouth for a second, thinking: that was two miles! He realized he had been about to answer back to an order, and snapped his gaping trap shut but fast. He didn’t know whether to salute the Chief or not; regulations required salutes on deck but none below. He was inside the superstructure and thus technically “below,” but his superior stood outside the hatch on deck. He decided on caution and popped a smart salute and was about to belt out an “Aye aye, sir!” when the Chief slapped a meaty hand over his mouth. He held a finger in front of his lips and glared into the boy’s staring eyes.
“Quietly, son, quietly.” Released, the nervous seaman nodded, nearly stumbling over himself to get away from this imposing man. Down the companionway he tried his best to remember. Did you salute a Chief Petty Officer at all? He retreated down the passage to deliver his message. For just an instant James let his mind turn to Louise, the enchanting creature he had met at a USO dance hardly a year ago. Then, turning back to keep an eye on his target, Owens shook his head again at the smoker’s foolishness. These kids, he thought. Just three months before, he had turned twenty years old.
Lester Clayton Tottenmann gripped the milky green steering wheel of the 1938 Buick so hard his fingers ached. Sweat dripped down his wrists onto the chrome horn rim. Florida Highway 42 unrolled before him, beaten tarmac lined with oak, pines, and palmetto. If he never saw another palmetto, he swore to God, it would be too soon. Same with the damned palm trees. They were nothing more than palmettos on a stick. He hated Florida. Not even once a year did a white man get a break from the heat, the mosquitos, the sand flies. It was hell. He would never have come here if it wasn’t for her.
He looked at the woman beside him, sleeping with her head on the passenger window. Her glossy black hair curled around her neck like any white girl, her chin was strong, her nose was small and delicate. Her eyes, when they were open, were black-coffee dark, yet shot sparks out at him whenever she smiled. She was beautiful. But the dark yellow tone of her face, the fullness of her gorgeous lips, betrayed her black ancestry. He shook his head as he wondered, once again, how “that black whore” had become the love of his life.
Lester hated niggers. Hell, that was nothin’, he hated Jews, Cath’lics, Commies, and queers just as bad. Growing up in Birdswood South Carolina, hating niggers was just what you did. He’d never really thought much about it. You turned eighteen, you signed up at the draft board, then you went next door to the Democrat Party headquarters and signed up for the KKK. It was just too bad that you couldn’t register in the Democrat Party too, until you were twenty-one, but that was just the way it was. Lester had now “lost” his draft card, but nobody was checking them anymore. He still had his KKK card, but he figured it was time to ditch that too.
The problem was, Lester was a born-again, nigger-hatin’, White Christian Knight of the Ku Klux Klan, whatever the hell that was, and he was wildly, impossibly in love with a high-yellow dance-hall girl named Porcelain Jones. And there was no way, in Birdswood or anywhere else in South Carolina, any white man could be with a black woman. Any black woman. Oh, you could sleep with her, rape her even, which would be better, especially if you told it to your buddies just right, with lots of her screamin’ and cryin’ and all. But be with her? Date her, godforbid marry her? A man might as well try to fly to the moon. The local Klan would beat him senseless, kill him for sure. But her, they would take her and rape her until she was dead, or wished she was. He knew damn well that’s what they would do, because he had seen it. God help him, he’d taken part in it. Now he questioned everything he’d ever known, and found not one single good answer for a man with any brains at all. What did Ku Klux Klan mean, really? Just some made-up crap like a fairy tale. A bunch of nasty boys playing at being grownups. What the hell had he been doing, wasting his time hating people he didn’t even know? People who would never even know or care whether he hated them or not. How should he feel now, knowing he had helped perpetrate unspeakable crimes on the people of this woman he loved with all his heart?
Lester Clayton Tottenmann knew the North was more sympathetic to mixed-race couples, but not so much as folks might think. Besides, he didn’t know anyone up north, and as much as he hated the heat of Florida he really wasn’t suited for the cold either. It was in KKK reports on the “quality of White Life in America” he’d read that places like Miami and Key West were very tolerant. Large populations of Cubanos and Bahamian negroes made for “a dangerous atmosphere of indifference to miscegenation,” which “atmosphere,” Lester now understood, might be a refuge for him and his girl Porcelain. He had a distant cousin, Healy, who now lived in Key West, a boy everyone in Birdswood had thought was queer since he was about twelve years old. They were probably right. But for that very reason, Lester thought Healy might help him now. It was a strange feeling, working things out for himself, asking for help from someone he thought he should hate. It was hard, but for the love of Porcelain Jones, he would do it. He would do anything.
Lottie was in love. She had run away from home looking for a man who would feed her and not beat her and maybe give her babies, but if she could have a man like Blackie Wainwright, she swore she would be the happiest girl on Earth. Of course she never let him hear her call him that, he hated that name, but it really suited him. He looked like a stocky Gable, all black hair, flowing mustache, and shiny blue eyes. Besides, she didn’t know what his real name was anyhow, and he didn’t much like talking about his past. She got to ride in front with him while he drove, talking and laughing, and she slept with him every night. She got all dreamy thinking about that. The man had a cock like a damn plow horse. Oh, a couple times they’d all had at her, but she didn’t mind too much. The boy, Jackson, was a nice kid, a little poontang wouldn’t hurt him none. Joe Hook was a funny fellow, with a little old pecker about as big as her finger which didn’t hurt her none. After knowing her only a few days he’d asked her about some of her clothes, which was odd because he never said anything most times. She got it that he was one of them guys who liked girl stuff. She’d heard a lot of ’em weren’t queer, and he sure wasn’t, leastways not all the way. Big as she was, Lottie had nothing close to fitting his skinny bones, so she begged a little money from Blackie and bought him a few things.
They stopped in Naples, a little fishing village about half a day’s drive from Fort Myers, and she slipped away to a ladies’ store, across the sandy road from the waterfront juke joint where the boys sat on a breezy porch made of weathered bare planks eating fried mullet and hush puppies. She’d never eaten so good in her life, but she didn’t feel like she had to gobble so much anymore like she used to. She didn’t have her brothers and father snatching anything she didn’t eat quick away from her.
The Shop Lady, who was so dressed up she must have just come from church, looked sideways at her until she wanted to stick her tongue out at the old bat, but she kept it in her mouth and instead told her about her poor consumptive little sister Delia and how she just wanted a few nice things to make Delia feel, well you know, Reverend Mrs. Tight-Ass Shop Lady, sorta ladylike. Then she went on about how long she had worked and saved, and Christmas coming in a few months, and she just wanted to do something nice for Sis before, well, you know.
It worked like the old voodoo charm. In no time the Reverend, as Lottie now thought of her, was crooning about the “poor dear” sister and asking her about sizes, and what did she do for a living? If it was laundry or housekeeping, she could certainly find her work! Oh, the Ladies of Naples would surely take to a hardworking girl like herself, and what was her name? Lottie smiled at her like an angel.
“Wainwright. Lottie Wainwright.” It had been Jackson, of all people, who had told her of Blackie’s family and his downfall. Of the Pennsylvania Wainwrights? “No ma’am,” she said sweetly, in her heavy South Georgia accent, “we’re from Cape Cod.” The Reverend’s eyebrows rose to perilous heights and Lottie nearly choked trying not to laugh. And what did the, ah, Cape Cod Wainwrights do? At this Lottie sent her eyes to the floor, and she almost let a tear roll down her cheek. “We were in merchant shipping,” she said sadly, “but the war ended all that.” That did it. Now the Reverend was in full surrender, and with a gasp gave the startled girl a hug. She had sons who had served on the merchant marine ships, and one had been killed, and did Lottie know how brave they were, and how awful it was that they were never treated like real servicemen? Oh my God, it was so nice, she gushed, to speak to someone of real breeding after all these years in the swamps, and what in the world could she do to help make this the best Christmas Lottie Wainwright’s poor dear sister Delia ever had?
Lottie walked back across the road with bags full of clothes, five times her money’s worth and some included for her, because her old clothes fit her so badly now she was slimmer, and the Reverend Mrs. Not-So-Tight-Assed-After-All, at least if she thought you were someone of “real breeding,” felt she should have some new ones for being such a good girl and taking care of her poor dear little sister Delia. Before she, well, you know. She walked out of the store with three bags of clothes, more than she could have bought with ten times the money.
Most of the stuff she got for Joe were underthings, because he could wear them all the time. But she had picked out a simple white strap-shouldered dress, which, with a pair of dungarees, would look pretty much like one of her daddy’s undershirts with no sleeves. She got in the back of the Ford and changed into a yellow sundress, which didn’t match the season, but hell, it was probably eighty degrees out there. It was true she was losing weight; the reverend had even mentioned it. She figured Lottie’s baggy clothing was due to having fallen on hard times. Lottie knew it was because for the first time in her life she was happy. She brushed her hair, slapped on some lipstick she’d filched off the Reverend’s counter, and stashed the rest of the stuff in the trunk. Looking at herself in the rearview, she smiled. She looked like a million bucks. Well, maybe half a million.
She had left the Reverend with her promise to return early the next morning and go to work for her, which would help pay off the clothes, and she would get more work from the Ladies of Naples, Florida, and things, the Reverend had assured her while patting her hand, would be just fine. She walked back towards the unpainted boards of the honky-tonk restaurant in her yellow dress as the sun was going down over the water, and the look on Blackie’s face told her that yes, things were sure as shootin’ going to be just fine. They drank beers in bottles, cold from tubs full of ice, and shots of rum in coconut milk from palm trees that ruffled in the wind just outside the back door, and they danced to the jukebox until late that moonlit night, and then they got in that car and they drove away from Naples, Florida and never went back.
_______________
[Editor’s Note: The novella of which this installment is a part can be ordered from Amazon.]
| Copyright © 2017 by Roger Owens |
No comments:
Post a Comment