By Roger Owens
Louise Dedge stood with the dual rear wheels of the school bus behind her legs to help shield her from the blasting wind. She huddled between the buses with Jim and about a dozen Navy men and their girls, along with one civilian male and his girl: Horace Ball. Horace had astonished her by showing up at Excilencio and Healy’s bungalow, and he continued to surprise her now. He and his gorgeous Cubanita clung together as he calmed her with his fluent Spanish. He told her, Louise gathered, that they would stick with the Navy hombres because, after all, it was a sea storm and they of all people should know what to do. Horace spoke with confidence. The frightened girl nodded numbly, dripping wet and shaking in the cold wind, wanting to trust him. The white girls gathered while their men shouted in each other’s ears, trying to form a plan in the screaming gale. They ignored Horace’s lady until Louise grabbed her by the arms, pulled her into their group and hugged her close. The other girls hesitated for only one second, and then closed around her in a cooing mass, all arms and love, while she sobbed with fright. In the rain her tears poured unseen across Louise’s shoulder. Sand and seashells, tossed by the wind, battered the far side of the bus.
Water was running across the parking lot from behind them, milky from the marl clay, dissolving around and into their glossy formal shoes. Jim came to her and shouted confidentially that one of his swabs was experienced at boosting cars, and as he spoke the grinning boy finagled open the swing-arm door on the bus opposite the one they sheltered behind. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old. She could see him under the dash fiddling with something, then the bus chugged to life, belching smoke into the storm. He sat up in the driver’s seat and when the lights came on Louise thought she had never seen anything so wonderful in her life. The miscreant child gave them all a million-dollar smile in the dome light and waved them onto his bus like a proud tour guide.
They piled up the stairs and into the seats, glad to be out of the downpour. Even with the rain pounding on the roof like machine guns it seemed to be less deafening on the bus. They could hear each other breathing in great gulps and the girls began to chatter. Jim shouted, “Glass up them pneumonia holes!” and guys not long out of high school themselves set about sliding up the windows left open by students used to Key West’s constant heat. He then broke the young car thief’s heart by ordering him out of the driver’s chair. A thumb over the shoulder sent him towards the back, and since the seats up front were all taken now he had to endure the seamen’s taunts and chatter as he went by.
Jim knew how to take care of his boys, and he didn’t forget now. Having ridden school and city buses all his life in his hometown of Fort Wayne, Indiana, he picked up the driver’s microphone like a pro. His powerful voice cut through the sudden uproar. “Let’s have a big round of applause for Seaman McMillan for providing our transportation for this evening’s excursion.” Cheers and clapping rang out and McMillan was back up the aisle now, smiling, bowing, and tipping an imaginary hat. “All right, now, sit your ass down, McMillan, and let’s get the hell out of here.” More cheers, hoots, and whistles. Louise swore to herself they were enjoying themselves. Horse Balls certainly was. He and the little Cubana were all the way in the back, making out hot and heavy. Her smile had a certain smugness to it when she turned her loving eyes on Jim, who was now driving them all to safety.
James engaged the gears carefully, feeling the wind on the tall vehicle and trying to keep it from taking them broadside. He had to go southwest to the base and that put the southeast wind on their port bow. He knew this was a school bus and not a boat, but he could not help thinking in nautical terms. Nor was that a bad idea, as many of the same principles applied. The bus was a big waddling goose in a powerful, fluid environment that could swamp it in a minute, turn it over just like any ship. Jim pulled slowly left out of the school lot onto Flagler Avenue. He then turned to the right on First Street, behind a row of buildings, and instantly the wind and rain were broken, giving them a blessed lull in the incessant battering. Ahead he could see rain and palm fronds sailing above the second-story rooftops, but he could not see where the Gulf waterfront began. He figured it was six or seven blocks and then, with a left turn onto Roosevelt Boulevard, they could creep along the northern road, hiding from the wind behind every building on the island. Each side street was like a waterfall shooting sideways across the cobbled road from his left to his right. The bus would sway wildly right, the girls would scream, he would have to steer left, then they would be behind the houses again and he would have to drag the wheel back to the right. The girls never cheered when he straightened the bus. When they reached the Gulf side he took the ungainly vehicle slowly back west along the waterfront where the raging wind was almost completely blocked. He was able to accelerate to about fifteen miles per hour and in no time they were at the base.
That’s when more trouble started. Many of the girls were under-age and started screaming that their reputations would be ruined if they stayed the night at the Navy base. Everybody knew what kind of girl spent the night with a sailor – the loose kind. Jim’s mouth hung open; for once he was stopped in his tracks.
Louise was scared, now, that the high school girls would panic and do something stupid. Every one of them wanted to go home. Except for her, of course; she would follow Jim anywhere. And one other. The Cubana. She finally got sick of their crying and shouted at them in Spanish, her hands waving in the air, tears streaming black mascara from her eyes. “¡Eres un monton de perras locas! ¿Todos quieren morir?” Followed by a lot more. In the sudden silence, Horace translated in a clear, strong voice that rang out from the back of the bus. “You’re a bunch of crazy bitches! Do you all want to die? Your homes may already be gone. Your families dead. Do you want to follow them?” She continued for a few seconds and then turned to Horace. Horace hesitated. Then he struck ahead, with only a slight catch in his voice.
“Florencia...she says her man Horacio, ah, me, told her we should stay with the Navy men, because it is a nautical storm and they should know what to do. She, ah, she says she will stay with her man, and if you have good sense you will too.” The girls on the bus noticed how the Cubana pronounced Horse Ball’s name – “Ora’cheo” – and how sexy it sounded. Several of them really noticed Horace for the first time, but Louise suspected they were far too late. Florencia had staked a claim, and Louise doubted she could be easily moved from it. Their fears subdued, the girls agreed, if somewhat tearfully, to go with their men and take their chances.
The Navy men were thrilled, and they all shook Horace’s hand, complimented him on his Spanish and his Spanish sweetheart, and swore on their mother’s lives to behave as perfect gentlemen in the face of adversity. Horace was instantly speechless, and was rendered a perfect pink color when Louise planted a sisterly kiss on his left cheek. So that Florencia wouldn’t mind, she followed that up with a hug for the sweet little brunette, and told her in her horrible Spanish how brave she was. The smile she got back was so bright, Louise thought it might blind her.
Porcelain Jones hugged her knees in the corner of the little room she called home. Her and Lester. It wasn’t much but it was better than where she grew up. The walls had never been painted either place, but the salt air seemed to keep them from growing mold here. Conch shells, old life preservers, and hunks of knotted ropes, some blue and some green, decorated the walls, beachcombing keepsakes left by previous tenants. There was a lampstand made from bamboo, and the shade was hundreds of tiny shells glued to an old cloth cover. The squeaky excuse for a bed where she and Lester shared their own personal paradise was along the north end of the room, while the tiny sink, counter, and the pitiful little gas stove took up the other. She thought that where she lived was heaven. In fact, until tonight Porcelain had dared to believe she was going to get away with her life, to live with Lester and have children and get to be normal before she and everything she cared about died. Key West had a way about it that could make a person feel like that. Like maybe you could be left alone here. The way the storm was growling outside, she was again beginning to have her doubts.
To the left of the sink on the southeast corner, towards the Atlantic where the storm came from, was the claustrophobic john, so small she could hardly sit with her pregnant belly so big. To the right of the counter and the stove was the only door, which led to the stairs and two floors down to the street. Across that street was an empty marl lot knee-high with weeds, hard as a stone, and filling with water. In the center of the lot an old diesel tank patiently rusted in the salt airs, six feet off the rocky ground on a scabby iron frame the same color as the tank: sun-charred brown. Across that lot was Louise Dedge’s house, Porcelain’s only friend except for Lottie. Louise was at a party at her high school, and Porcelain had wished she could go. That was before the storm, of course. She loved parties. No one would have liked her, though, a black girl with no husband and a baby on the way. Or with her white husband! Even in Key West that would raise a storm to beat the one outside. Lester Clayton was supposed to return with the Honoria B. tonight, and she wished and prayed with all her will that he would come home.
The decrepit tenement house rocked in the awful wind, straining and groaning like a bear with a toothache. She had to go pee again – it seemed like she had to go every five minutes these last few days – and she knew her time was near. In spite of her dread of the howling wind, she crept to the tiny bathroom once again.
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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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