Fiction: Dancing at the Driftwood Hotel (#4)

A novella with some real characters

By Roger Owens

Porcelain Jones was still terrified. Something had to go wrong. Everything in her nineteen years always had gone wrong, and there was no reason to think now would be any different. Her father had died, her stepdaddy lost his job like every other black man when all the white boys came home from the war, and took to drinking and beating her mother and everyone else near him. And worse. He’d tried to come to her bed more than once, but he’d always been so drunk she’d been able to fight him off. She worked a little at Mrs. Jeffries’ dance hall to make enough money to get out of the house, but she had known that sometime she would have to sell herself to live. There was no work anywhere. The service jobs that had sustained her family for generations were going to white women who were out of work for the same reason black men’s jobs were going to white men. The white men were back.
    When she had finally taken Mrs. Jeffries’ offer of twenty dollars to do more than dance with a man, that man had been Lester Clayton Tottenmann. He’d stared at her from the moment he entered the room, and had picked her out from half a dozen other girls. In spite of looking like a white bull calf, all muscle and bone, Lester had been nervous and surprisingly gentle. She was almost sure it was his first time too. She was as amazed as he was when he declared he loved her on their third date. Amazed because she was sure she loved him as well. She had never been with anyone else and she never wanted to. Mrs. Jeffries had been awful disappointed. She had looked forward to a lot of good paying customers, but Porcelain would never be a whore again.
    But it was a hard, hard world out there. She knew it from the ache in her belly and the hatred in men’s eyes, and she knew in her heart that Lester had been one of those men, but she was also sure that she would change him, had already changed him. He had said so himself. And if he could love her, then maybe he could learn not to hate a lot of other people so much anymore. She hoped for that, and for a home where they could be together, and for babies she could raise in the sun. She knew it would never happen, she knew not to “get her hopes too high,” as her momma always said, not to “let her imagination run away with her.” But it was nice to think about it, to dream about her babies running on the beach in the sunshine.

Louise Dedge was incensed . Mortified, if the truth were known! She smirked to herself as she crunched along the beach behind the hospital. Oh, she was educated enough, in the novels she liked, and in some she didn’t, but the one thing she knew about Mr. Charles Thompson was that he was a nice, harmless old gentleman. Well, two things really, and the second was that he was friends with Ernest Hemingway, even though Hemingway had, in her opinion, portrayed him badly in The Green Hills of Africa. She had been required to read Hemingway in school and, except for a few of his short stories, he bored her to a stupor every time. She had invited Mr. Thompson to the New Year’s celebration and he had mentioned the famous author, which she thought was angling for an invitation for his buddy. He was still friends with the man, even defended him, saying it was just fiction, artistic license and all that. Her daddy, who read the Bible, the Farmer’s Almanac, and Reader’s Digest, in that order, would know what to call that. Artistic bullshit. She snorted laughter again.
    On the cool wind from her left, the Atlantic Ocean reeked all salt and fish and rotten seaweed. A mixture of tiny curled shells and sand crunched like Rice Crispies under her feet.
    Louise had worked at the Navy laundry just outside of the naval base since she was twelve years old. On his odd trips downtown, Ernest Hemingway had dropped his clothes off to be done like he was a serviceman or something. Her mother said they needed the work and to stop complaining, he always paid his bill. What did she care whose clothes she washed? But he was always drunk and dirty, he smelled like sour beer, old fish and cigars, and he was nasty. He leered at her and made remarks. When she delivered his clothes to Whitehead Street, he always shorted her on the money, and tried to get her to come inside for the rest. Momma didn’t know about that, and she wasn’t about to tell her either. She was afraid of Hemingway, and despised having to read him for class. And according to nice old Mr. Thompson, the lecherous drunk might be coming back to town.
    Once, just last summer, when he had slipped away from his Secret Service bodyguards, President Truman himself had brought his own laundry right up to the window, wearing a sleeveless undershirt and a striped pair of pants held up by suspenders. Just like he was a local businessman or something, not trying to make himself out somebody special. Not like Hemingway. Louise had breathlessly promised to deliver the washing wherever Truman might be staying, but he told her no, that he would delight in confounding his poor guards once more and would pick his things up tomorrow. He spoke kindly to her mother, not snotty or anything, more like one shop owner to another. The same stuff Señor Aguilar from the Flamingo Cafe across Roosevelt Boulevard would talk about. Was business still good after the war? Was she able to collect her money? What would happen to her if the illegal Bahamian immigrants were forced to leave?
    Well. Lola Dedge gave him an earful on that one. She relied on the Bahamians for her overflow, jobs she would otherwise have to pass by. The Conch women worked for cheap, they were good people, and they needed the money. She was doing all right since the war ended; they were starving. With all the men home, no woman could get a job, much less a black woman. They did the rough lots, the Navy cot liners the swabs called “fart sacks,” the bloody surgery linens, the sheets from the yellow-fever ward, covered with puke and shit. Dead mens’ clothes. It didn’t pay good, she said, but it paid, and it was a darned shame the greatest country on Earth couldn’t see to it people didn’t starve, even if they were Conchs and black and believed in voodoo and what-all, they were all God’s children, and it was a darned shame.
    President Truman seemed to take her very seriously, and when she handed him the ticket for his shirts and socks and trousers he told her he would think about what she had told him. He palmed the ticket, holding both hands in his pockets as he wished them a pleasant day. When he walked away down Roosevelt in the baking sun, he had his eyes on his feet, as if he really was mulling over the words of her mother, Lola Dedge.
    Now, Louise thought, he ought to be wearing his hat, he’ll take a sunburn on his thinning head. Then she remembered that it was only named Roosevelt Boulevard since President Roosevelt had died, leaving Truman President only eighty-three days into his term as Vice President. What a weight that man had on his shoulders.

James Donald Owens was on leave as of today, 29 December 1946, after a two-week night-mission exercise. He stowed his sea bag in his locker and headed on deck to officially go ashore. He wore summer whites since it was unseasonably warm even for Key West, Florida. The temperature hovered around 79 degrees. There was no wind at all, which was also unusual this time of year. The damp air seemed to catch in the lungs, even down below. He couldn’t wait to get ashore and smoke a cigarette.
    On his left wrist the silver bracelet his father had bought him gleamed in the blinding sunshine. Stamped on it in capital letters were his name, JIM OWENS, and his Navy ID number, 294-41-71. It was popular for Navy men to wear such a bracelet, in case the ship went down or he was blown up by a bomb, and a man’s body might otherwise be unidentifiable. At least his family would know. Many Navy families after World War II did not know, and would never know. James was the kind of man who would never want to do that to those he loved, and besides, Louise liked it. It showed, she told him, that his family cared about him and were willing to show it with more than talk. He could never have afforded such a bracelet for himself, and he was gratified in a grim but good-humored way that his dad would spend the money. On the back was stamped STERLING MADE IN MEXICO. Everyone knew the best silver still came from Mexico. He wore it every second of the day and night.
    The Sarsfield had won Best in Exercise for his spotting the opposing ship because of some dingleberry named Seaman Second Class Walter Littlefield, USN, who had decided to sneak a smoke during a night exercise when the smoking lamp was off. Owens had checked into it, because he was interested to know what might have happened to such an incredible asshole on someone else’s ship. In wartime that fool would have been endangering every man aboard his ship, and most of them even now would want to beat him so bad his momma wouldn’t know him.
    James knew what he would have done. On his ship, that sucker would have slipped on a bar of soap in the shower. Hell, he’d have slipped on a case of soap. Jim would have hit that little peckerwood so hard he’d get a speeding ticket in Miami. He’d have kicked that man’s ass so bad he would get a medical discharge just for the bruises on his tucas, and no one would say a damn word, other than maybe “good job.” It was a scandal, an outrage. Turned out, according to a Mate on the other boat, the guy’s name was now Seaman Third Class Trainee Soapy-Soapy Butt Boy, and he had been set to scrubbing heads and bilges and chipping rust with a rubber hammer. With a broken arm, nose, collarbone, and some chancy ribs, or so the story went. When asked if he wanted an inquiry into his injuries, Seaman Butt Boy had declined. Jim thought Littlefield had gotten off light. He’d have broken both his arms – hell, every bone in his body – and then set the son of a bitch to hauling artillery shells.
    He checked out with the Officer of the Day and saluted his way to the gangplank. The second his feet were dry he shook out a fag and cracked his Zippo for a light. He sucked in smoke and let it billow out, and it drifted above him in the still air. He bent backwards in a pose for his buddies still aboard, holding the cig up like a movie star, and gave them the big bird finger. They all waved back in the same famous One Finger Salute, and he laughed in the sunshine. He had five glorious days ashore coming, including New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, and a dance put on by Key West High, which Louise was helping to organize. He felt a stir in his pants when he thought of that girl; she was going to be his, he just knew it. He had never wanted anything so bad in all his life. And James Donald Owens knew how to get what he wanted. You had to work for it, and he was just the man for the job.
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[Editor’s Note: The novella of which this installment is a part can be ordered from Amazon.]

Copyright © 2017 by Roger Owens