Sailor & Lula Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  WILD AT HEART - THE STORY OF SAILOR AND LULA

  GIRL TALK

  WILD AT HEART

  UNCLE POOCH

  MARIETTA AND JOHNNIE

  HEAT WAVE

  SOUTHERN STYLE

  THE DIFFERENCE

  DIXIE PEACH

  THE REST OF THE WORLD

  ON THE GULF COAST

  ORDINARY COMPANIONS

  HUNGER IN AMERICA

  BIRDS DO IT

  SPEED TO BURN

  LOCUS CERULEUS

  ANIMAL LIFE

  SAILOR’S DREAM

  THE POLISH FATHER

  ROAD KID

  TALK PRETTY TO ME

  SURVIVORS

  OLD NOISE

  NIGHT LIFE

  LATE BLUES

  DAL’S SECRET

  BAD IDEAS

  HARD NEWS

  DON’T DIE FOR ME

  THE MIDDLE OF THINGS

  WELCOME TO BIG TUNA

  THE BIG NOWHERE

  ONE NIGHT IN NACOGDOCHES

  READER’S STORY

  NIGHT AND DAY AT THE IGUANA HOTEL

  THE EARLY YEARS

  MOSQUITOES

  THE BLACK ANGEL

  THE MEANING OF LIFE

  FRIENDS

  ONE STEP BEYOND

  BOBBY’S BAD DAY

  MARIETTA’S TREASURE

  LETTER FROM LULA

  LETTER FROM SAILOR

  RITARDANDO

  PERDITA DURANGO

  FAST FORWARD

  SISTERHOOD

  THE NAME OF SCIENCE

  THE GOOD LIFE

  NIGHT THOUGHTS

  NEW MORNING

  LETTER FROM CARIBE

  TRAVEL PLANS

  LOCAL COLOR

  THE CAUSE

  THE HAND

  DESPERADO

  PIGEONS

  FACES

  A FEW GOOD MEN

  STORM WARNING

  BAD ROAD

  HEROES

  THE BAT

  PLEASURES

  BEAUTIES

  IL AFFARE

  THE HOUSE OF DREAMS

  QUIET TIME AT THE RANCHO NEGRITA INFANTE

  THE OTHER SIDE OF THE RIVER

  GOOD EYE

  TOUGH BOYS

  BON VOYAGE

  GHOULS

  LIVES OF THE SAINTS

  COMMUNION

  THE WORLD AND EVERYTHING IN IT

  THE BIG DAY

  A VISIT TO SPARKY & BUDDY’S

  CRITICS

  THE CHOICE

  RUBOUT

  OUT OF THE PAST

  DETOUR

  FLIGHT

  SALAMANDERS

  HISTORY LESSON

  BACK AT THE NURSERY

  WAVES

  CAMISADO

  AFTER HOURS

  LATE DATE

  LIGHT IN THE FOREST

  THE OLD TESTAMENT

  BACK FROM ETERNITY

  59° AND RAINING IN TUPELO

  SAILOR’S HOLIDAY

  LULA CALLS

  MARIETTA’S PARTY

  THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY REVISITED

  PLAN A

  PLAN B

  POPPY AND PERDITA

  SOUTHERN BELL

  BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY

  SAVING GRACE

  HEART TALK

  ILL WIND

  A WALK IN THE PARK

  ONE NEVER KNOWS

  NIGHT AND FOG

  MARIETTA’S TRIAL

  BROTHERS

  FULL CIRCLE

  THE CUBAN EMERALD

  KEEPING THE FAITH

  NIGHT IN THE CITY

  THE EDGE OF LIFE

  OUT OF THIS WORLD

  THE OVERCOAT

  IN THE WAKE OF THE NEWS

  A WELL-RESPECTED MAN

  EVIDENCE

  SULTANS OF AFRICA

  SULTANS OF AFRICA

  BACKFIRE

  THE MIDDLE YEARS

  RATTLERS

  IN BED WITH THE RATTLERS

  DOWN TIME

  AFTER HOURS

  SNAKES IN THE FOREST

  GOOD ENOUGH

  BLACK PLANET

  KILLERS

  LIVES OF THE HUNTED

  JALOUX

  DOWN TO ZERO

  HOMAGE TO PROMETHEUS

  TALK TURKEY TO ME

  SCOOBA’S

  LULA’S PLANS

  THE SHINING PATH

  BACK TO BUDDHALAND

  THE PARADISE

  RIOT AT ROCK HILL

  SHAKE, RATTLE & ROLL

  NEWS ON THE HOUR

  WORKING IN THE GOLD MINE

  PURE MISERY

  PARADISE REVISITED

  FAMOUS LAST WORDS

  CONSUELO’S KISS

  CONSUELO’S KISS

  SAILOR AND LULA AT HOME

  THE AGE OF REASON

  MEN IN CHAIRS

  RUNNING INTO DARKNESS

  EVERY MAN A KING

  RED BIRD

  BURNING LOVE

  BANTER AT BODE’S

  PICKUP

  THE SUITOR

  CONFESSION

  WEIRD BY HALF

  OUT OF BODY

  PROFESSIONALS

  SPRINKLE BODIES

  A WORLD OF GOOD

  THE PROPOSAL

  POISON

  SOLO

  LIFE AS WE KNOW IT

  BAD DAY FOR THE LEOPARD MAN

  SHORT OF HEAVEN

  BAD DAY FOR THE LEOPARD MAN

  ARTIFICIAL LIGHT

  WRANGLER’S PARADISE

  THE CRY OF THE MUTILATED

  THE MUSEUM OF OPINION

  LONGEVITY’S VICTIMS

  THAT’S WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THE SOUTH

  THE HORROR

  CAT PEOPLE

  STRANGE VOYAGE

  BALL LIGHTNING

  LONG DISTANCE CALL

  ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES

  KITTY KAT CALLS

  KITTY KAT TALKS

  THE BUSINESS

  LONG GONE

  THE UNEXPECTED

  A WINTER’S NIGHT IN THE SUB-TROPICS

  SAILOR’S PLAN

  SNAKE STORY

  TORNADO WEATHER

  MOVIEGOERS

  FODDER

  BROKEN BLOSSOMS

  RADIANCE - JETLINER CRASHES, BURNS AFTER MID-AIR EXPLOSION

  LETTER TO DAL

  THE IMAGINATION OF THE HEART

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  CODA

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT SEVEN STORIES PRESS

  Copyright Page

  WILD AT HEART

  THE STORY OF SAILOR AND LULA

  This book is dedicate
d to the memory of Charles Willeford

  You need a man to go to hell with.

  —Tuesday Weld

  GIRL TALK

  Lula and her friend Beany Thorn sat at a table in the Raindrop Club drinking rum Co-Colas while watching and listening to a white blues band called The Bleach Boys. The group segued smoothly from Elmore James’s “Dust My Broom” into Robert Johnson’s “Me and the Devil” and Beany let out a snort.

  “I can’t stand this singer,” she said.

  “He ain’t so bad,” said Lula. “Carries a tune.”

  “Not that, just he’s so ugly. Guys with beards and beer guts ain’t quite my type.”

  Lula giggled. “Seein’s how you’re about thick as a used string of unwaxed dental floss, don’t know how you can criticize.”

  “Yeah, well, if he says all that flab turns into dick at midnight, he’s a liar.”

  Lula and Beany laughed and swallowed some of their drinks.

  “So Sailor’s gettin’ out soon, I hear,” said Beany. “You gonna see him?”

  Lula nodded and crushed an ice cube with her back teeth and chewed it.

  “Meetin’ him at the gate,” she said.

  “I didn’t hate men so much,” said Beany, “I’d feel better wishin’ you luck.”

  “Can’t all husbands be perfect,” Lula said. “And Elmo prob’ly wouldn’ta ever got that second one pregnant you hadn’t kicked his ass out.”

  Beany twisted her blond bangs into a knot on her forehead.

  “Shoulda put a thirty-eight long in his groin, what I shoulda done.”

  The Bleach Boys kicked into some kind of Professor Longhair swamp mambo and Beany grabbed a waitress.

  “Bring us a couple more double-shot rum Co-Colas, ’kay?” she said. “Damn, Lula, look at that bitch wiggle.”

  “You mean the waitress?”

  “Uh huh. Bet if I had a butt like hers Elmo wouldn’ta stuck his dick in every other keyhole this side of the Tangipahoa.”

  “Hard to say for sure,” said Lula.

  Beany’s eyes watered up. “I guess,” she said. “Only I’d give up plenty—Valiums even, maybe—just to have me some kind of a butt anyway, you know?”

  WILD AT HEART

  Sailor and Lula lay on the bed in the Cape Fear Hotel listening to the ceiling fan creak. From their window they could see the river as it entered the Atlantic Ocean and watch the fishing boats navigate the narrow channel. It was late June but there was a mild wind that kept them “not uncomfortable,” as Lula liked to say.

  Lula’s mother, Marietta Pace Fortune, had forbidden her to see Sailor Ripley ever again, but Lula had no intention of following that order. After all, Lula reasoned, Sailor had paid his debt to society, if that’s what it was. She couldn’t really understand how going to prison for killing someone who had been trying to kill him could be considered payment of a debt to society.

  Society, such as it was, thought Lula, was certainly no worse off with Bob Ray Lemon eliminated from it. In her mind, Sailor had performed a service beneficial in the short as well as the long run to mankind and should have received some greater reward than two years in the Pee Dee River work camp for second-degree manslaughter. Something like an all-expenses-paid trip for Sailor with the companion of his choice—Lula, of course—to New Orleans or Hilton Head for a couple of weeks. A top hotel and a rental car, like a snazzy new Chrysler LeBaron convertible. That would have made sense. Instead, poor Sailor has to clear brush from the side of the road, dodge snakes and eat bad fried food for two years. Because Sailor was a shade more sudden than that creep Bob Ray Lemon he gets punished for it. The world is really wild at heart and weird on top, Lula thought. Anyway, Sailor was out now and he was still the best kisser she’d ever known, and what Mrs. Marietta Pace Fortune didn’t find out about wasn’t about to hurt her, was it?

  “Speakin’ of findin’ out?” Lula said to Sailor. “Did I write to you about my findin’ Grandaddy’s letters in the attic bureau?”

  Sailor sat up on his elbows. “Were we speakin’?” he said. “And no.”

  Lula clucked her tongue twice. “I was thinkin’ we’d been but I been wrong before. Sometimes I get like that now. I think somethin’ and then later think I’ve said it out loud to someone?”

  “I really did miss your mind while I was out at Pee Dee, honey,” said Sailor. “The rest of you, too, of course. But the way your head works is God’s own private mystery. Now what about some letters?”

  Lula sat up and fixed a pillow behind her back. Her long black hair, which she usually wore tied back and partly wrapped like a racehorse’s tail, fanned out behind her on the powder blue pillowcase like a raven’s wings. Her large grey eyes fascinated Sailor. When he was on the road gang he had thought about Lula’s eyes, swum in them as if they were great cool, grey lakes with small violet islands in the middle. They kept him sane.

  “I always wondered about my grandaddy. About why Mama never chose to speak about her daddy? All I ever knew was that he was livin’ with his mama when he died.”

  “My daddy was livin’ with his mama when he died,” said Sailor. “Did you know that?”

  Lula shook her head. “I surely did not,” she said. “What were the circumstances?”

  “He was broke, as usual,” Sailor said. “My mama was already dead by then from the lung cancer.”

  “What brand did she smoke?” asked Lula.

  “Camels. Same as me.”

  Lula half rolled her big grey eyes. “My mama smokes Marlboros now,” she said. “Used to be she smoked Kools? I stole ’em from her beginnin’ in about sixth grade. When I got old enough to buy my own I bought those. Now I’ve just about settled on Mores, as you probably noticed? They’re longer.”

  “My daddy was lookin’ for work and got run over by a gravel truck on the Dixie Guano Road off Seventy-four,” said Sailor. “Cops said he was drunk—daddy, not the truck driver—but I figure they just wanted to bury the case. I was fourteen at the time.”

  “Gee, Sailor, I’m sorry, honey. I never would have guessed it.”

  “It’s okay. I hardly used to see him anyway. I didn’t have much parental guiding. The public defender kept sayin’ that at my parole hearin’.”

  “Well, anyway,” said Lula, “turns out my mama’s daddy embezzled some money from the bank he was clerkin’ in? And got caught. He did it to help out his brother who had TB and was a wreck and couldn’t work. Grandaddy got four years in Statesville and his brother died. He wrote Grandmama a letter almost every day, tellin’ her how much he loved her? But she divorced him while he was in the pen and never talked about him to anyone again. She just refused to suffer his name. But she kept all his letters! Can you believe it? I read every one of ’em, and I tell you that man loved that woman. It must have broke him apart when she refused to stand by him. Once a Pace woman makes up her mind there’s no discussin’ it.”

  Sailor lit a Camel and handed it to Lula. She took it, inhaled hard, blew the smoke out and half rolled her eyes again.

  “I’d stand by you, Sailor,” Lula said. “If you were an embezzler.”

  “Hell, peanut,” Sailor said, “you stuck with me after I’d planted Bob Ray Lemon. A man can’t ask for more than that.”

  Lula pulled Sailor over to her and kissed him soft on the mouth. “You move me, Sailor, you really do,” she said. “You mark me the deepest.”

  Sailor pulled down the sheet, exposing Lula’s breasts. “You’re perfect for me, too,” he said.

  “You remind me of my daddy, you know?” said Lula. “Mama told me he liked skinny women whose breasts were just a bit too big for their bodies. He had a long nose, too, like yours. Did I ever tell you how he died?”

  “No, sugar, you didn’t that I recall.”

  “He got lead-poisoned from cleanin’ the old paint off our house without usin’ a mask. Mama said his brain just fell apart in pieces. Started he couldn’t remember things? Got real violent? Finally in the middle of one night he poured kerosen
e over himself and lit a match. Near burned down the house with me and Mama asleep upstairs. We got out just in time. It was a year before I met you.”

  Sailor took the cigarette out of Lula’s hand and put it into the ashtray by the bed. He put his hands on her small, nicely muscled shoulders and kneaded them.

  “How’d you get such good shoulders?” Sailor asked.

  “Swimmin’, I guess,” said Lula. “Even as a child I loved to swim.”

  Sailor pulled Lula to him and kissed her throat.

  “You got such a pretty, long neck, like a swan,” he said.

  “Grandmama Pace had a long, smooth white neck,” said Lula. “It was like on a statue it was so white? I like the sun too much to be white like that.”

  Sailor and Lula made love, and afterward, while Sailor slept, Lula stood at the window and smoked one of Sailor’s Camels while she stared at the tail of the Cape Fear River. It was a little spooky, she thought, to be at the absolute end of a body of water. Lula looked over at Sailor stretched out on his back on the bed. It was odd that a boy like Sailor didn’t have any tattoos, she thought. His type usually had a bunch. Sailor snorted in his sleep and turned onto his side, showing Lula his long, narrow back and flat butt. She took one more puff and threw the cigarette out the window into the river.

  UNCLE POOCH

  “Five years ago?” Lula said. “When I was fifteen? Mama told me that when I started thinkin’ about sex I should talk to her before I did anything about it.”

  “But honey,” said Sailor, “I thought you told me your Uncle Pooch raped you when you were thirteen.”

  Lula nodded. She was standing in the bathroom of their room at the Cape Fear Hotel fooling with her hair in front of the mirror. Sailor could see her through the doorway from where he lay on the bed.

  “That’s true,” Lula said. “Uncle Pooch wasn’t really an uncle. Not a blood uncle, I mean. He was a business partner of my daddy’s? And my mama never knew nothin’ about me and him for damn sure. His real name was somethin’ kind of European, like Pucinski. But everyone just called him Pooch. He came around the house sometimes when Daddy was away. I always figured he was sweet on Mama so when he cornered me one afternoon I was surprised more than a little.”

  “How’d it happen, peanut?” Sailor asked. “He just pull out the old toad and let it croak?”