By Roger Owens
Lester Clayton Tottenmann couldn’t believe he was still alive, that Porcelain would not be raped and killed, that anything might ever be all right again. How had this happened? He was a dead man. If it had been him on the other end of that oar, the son of a bitch on the ground would have been a goner for sure and for certain. What had he, a piece of racist shit not much better than the slab of meat sprawled on the white sand by his feet, ever done to deserve to keep on living? What right did he have to keep his girl, the only girl he ever loved? His head began to clear, and he wondered if he would be in any better shape with these white men than he had been with the others. He thought maybe he had a chance with these folks. They didn’t seem to be in the game the way backwoods people up home were, the way salt-water folks seemed to be here. But then again, they hadn’t seen Porcelain yet.
He got to his feet with the help of the two people whose faces peered down at him as he struggled to rise. He had just decided that the little guy in the dress and jeans really was a guy, or the ugliest damn near bald woman he could imagine. He was awful strong for a woman though, hauling Lester up as easily as the young buck on the other side of him. He saw the other one, a real woman, any fool could tell that, pick up the dim flashlight from where Plaid Shirt had dropped it, and shine it into the car.
“Aw, he’s got a girlfriend. And look...she’s beautiful!” The woman pulled the door open, and Porcelain warily put her feet out on the gritty, churned-up sand. She turned frightened eyes on the people gathered around her, and Lester jerked forward. The boys on either side held him for a second, and the weird little guy whispered in his ear.
“It’s all right, it’s all right.” He patted Lester’s arm like his own mother would. It was damn near the most words he would ever hear at one time from the man he would later learn was named Joe Hook. Those words instantly set him at ease, and he relaxed, so they turned him loose. He went to Porcelain and hugged her, and she was crying over his bashed up face and he was crying and laughing and kissing her, and there was blood on both their faces and they didn’t neither one care.
“Look at them. You see that?” Lottie stared in Blackie’s twisted face. “Can you see what’s right? Do you see it now? What they have? They love each other. That’s worth more than that little murderer there. That’s worth more than...anything.” Tears were running down Blackie’s face, and she still wished he would hug her, but he just nodded, and he started to tuck the heavy pistol away. She put her hand on his.
“Do you have any more bullets?” He nodded again, turning his head sideways at her a little. She looked around in the light of the headlights, at the heavy, salty woods, the mangroves, and the rolling waters, the windy nothing and nobody that surrounded them. The darkness. “Then you’d better reload first.” He shook his head yes again, and his grin was wide and scary, but he opened the revolver and dumped the empty shells and pulled fresh loads from one of his many khaki pockets. It struck her that if Blackie ever needed to know what to do, she would need to be there to tell him what it was. It would not happen often, but if at any time he began letting the mule steer the wagon, she figured she would have to be the one to take the straps.
Winchell Sanford Wainwright III had never before been hugged by a negra woman, let alone one with blood on her face and her dress awry and tears streaming as she hugged him so hard his neck cracked. It was from driving so long, he thought. That was why his neck was stiff. He could not say the experience was at all unpleasant. The hug, not the driving. The girl was gorgeous, like a movie star. And she had a pair of boobs that wouldn’t quit. He thought they were not quite so big as Lottie’s, and he almost smiled in some kind of smug dream of possession. He realized he was comparing this woman to “his girl,” and the thought did not scare him at all. Lottie was his girl? Sounded good to him.
The man was thanking him like a jack sailor saved from drowning for helping them, and he felt a little better about shooting the kid. It brought him to his senses. He tapped Joe Hook on the shoulder and motioned to Jackson to follow. They grabbed the dead boy by his gum rubber boots but they pulled off. The stench was worse than the shit he had taken when he died. Jackson threw the boots into the bushes and started hustling the body through the tangled grass and weeds, to Winchell’s surprise. The lad showed some gumption. Maybe he had been being too hard on him. He’d had the sense to run off from his boring existence in the first place, after all, more sense than Winchell himself had possessed at that age. He helped the others drag the body along the shoreline through the snaky shoots of the mangroves, which, on the sand flats, stuck up like inverted pale roots. They grabbed at the legs of the conspirators like bony fingers, caressing their ghastly burden like witches in a Shakespeare play. When Jackson went to put him in the bushes, Joe Hook shook his head and said something to the boy. Jackson turned a shade of green Wainwright swore he could have identified to a marine paint contractor in spite of the dim moonlight, then reversed and pulled the dead man towards the water instead. Joe Hook unbuckled the boy’s belt and found a chunk of rock heavy enough to sink him. He slipped the rock into the boy’s pants and tightened the belt as much as he could to hold it. The three of them walked him out until the water came to Joe Hook’s chin, then they let him go.
On the way back, Jackson stepped off the path and doubled over, puking up the pork chops and lima beans he’d had for dinner in Palm Beach. Winchell stopped with him, patting him on the back. When the boy was done tasting his supper again, he stood up, wiping his mouth with his hand.
“What did Joe Hook say to you back there?” Wainwright asked Jackson. Jackson Lee Davis stood to his full height, taller than Wainwright, and took a deep breath. “He said...said the crabs would take care of him.” Jackson went on taking such deep pulls of air, Wainwright thought he would pass out. He finally calmed down, and they returned to the cars.
Joe Hook was sweeping palm leaves across the sand, while the beat-up fella had his car turned around and looked ready to get gone. Winchell didn’t blame him. He was now almost frantic to escape what he knew was a certain charge of murder if he was ever connected to this. Did he think for one instant the people he was with would come to his aid, testify in his defense? Of course not. Would he? The thought stuck in his mind like a fish bone might catch in the throat. Would he? He passed the other car, rubbing his hands across his scalp to drive the salt water out. The man who’d been attacked got back out and demanded to shake his hand. Winchell stood for a second, then took the extended palm.
“Do you have some fight going on with those men?” It was the only thing he could think of to say. The other shook his head. He was still holding on to Winchell’s hand. “I never saw them before in my life. I’m from South Carolina, and me and my girl come down here to get away from all that.” He stared hard into Wainwright’s eyes, as if seeking something specific, something he desperately hoped to find. The man from Massachusetts stared back, his head cocked in question. “All what?” After that, the man looked like he was going to cry, and Winchell dragged his hand away. That was when Lottie took him by the arm. She put her hand on the man’s shoulder and turned him to face her. “Was all this because she’s black?” He was nodding.
Winchell’s neck got red up to the back of his ears. “You mean,” he puffed, “those miscreants were going to kill you because your girlfriend has a little black blood? That’s it? Hell, she’s as white as I am!” Once again the man was nodding. “Lots of people, they don’t like me and her getting together, and what we done you cain’t even do legal-like, not in my home town,” he said. Winchell Sanford Wainwright III was now violently shaking his head in the negative.
“That’s all a load of racist horseshit, and in my home town you can live on the same street right beside me any damn day you please. We’ll have you over for cookouts on Saturdays, and the kids will play together. Goddamn, if I don’t feel one hell of a lot better just now. What did you say your name was?”
Porcelain Jones could no more believe she was alive than Lester said he could, and the idea that a car full of nice white folks might show up and save them from a boat full of bad white folks had surely never occurred to her in all her short life. In her experience, white folks other than Lester were either indifferent or meaner than snakes. Not that black folks were much better, and if it was possible to be worse, she knew some negroes who would do it just to show they could. It was only the fact that Lester seemed so sure they would be all right that let her relax at all. When a thumping had come on the window as they were about to leave, she jumped in her seat and let out a tiny scream of fear. Lester put his right hand on her thigh and patted it a few times. “It’s all right,” he said. She could never be sure. She shuddered and held her breath as Lester leaned over her and slowly rolled down the window. The white man with the gun leaned towards the car. When he spoke his voice sounded too big for the quiet night and the fact that death might be lurking nearby.
“Lester – your name is Lester, right? And the lady’s name is Porcelain?” Lester was still nervous too, she could tell in spite of what he said, for he spoke like a schoolboy sent to the office. “Yes, yes, sir. And thank you again, sir, I cain’t thank you enough.” The man was shaking his head but he seemed to be smiling in the moonlight. All Porcelain could hear was “lady.” “The lady,” he had said. He wasn’t joking or sneering or anything. He was calling her a lady.
“Don’t think a thing about it, it was the right thing to do. The only thing.” It sounded like the man with the gun needed to convince himself as much as anybody, but Porcelain would forever be positive he was right. They had done nothing but fall in love. She was just now thinking that they shouldn’t have to explain that to anybody, particularly a pack of white trash fishermen her real daddy would have run off with a shotgun. And it was way past time somebody understood that. She thought she might like this white man after all. He looked right at her as if she was just who she was, Lester Clayton Tottenmann’s girlfriend, and then turned back to Lester as if he spoke to a friend.
“Listen, Lester, we’re headed for Miami, and I was just wondering, have you ever done any fishing?” Lester hesitated, but Porcelain took the hand on her thigh and squeezed. “He’s fished as much as any hill boy, mister, but what are you asking?” The white man did not get mad at being spoken to by a colored woman, she could see that. He took her question as it was asked.
“Well, we’re going to Miami to buy a fishing boat, and we could use a few more hands. I talked to my partners about it, and they all agreed we should ask you two,” and he leaned his head intentionally towards her, “if you would like to come along and help us make some money fishing. I hear it’s not too hard to make a decent living. We tried logging a while back, and believe me when I say I do not recommend it.” His smile lit up that whole side of the car, and for once Porcelain thought that maybe things could be nice for a while.
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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 |
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