Southern Nights
southern
nights
night people
arise and walk
baby cat-face
BARRY GIFFORD
Seven Stories Press
New York / Oakland / London
Copyright © 2019, Barry Gifford
Night People © 1992, Barry Gifford. Originally published by Grove Press (New York, 1992).
Arise and Walk © 1994, Barry Gifford. Originally published by Hyperion (New York, 1994).
Baby Cat-Face © 1995, Barry Gifford. Originally published by Harcourt, Brace and Company (New York, 1995).
All rights reserved.
Excerpts from these novels have appeared in the following magazines and anthologies: Buzz (Los Angeles), Love Is Strange: Stories of Post-Modern Romance (New York) Panta (Milan), Exquisite Corpse (Baton Rouge), The Double Dealer Redux (New Orleans), First Intensity (New York), Hot Air [Virgin Airlines magazine] (London), Juice (Berkeley), and The French Quarter Fiction Anthology (New Orleans).
‘Respect’ by Otis Redding copyright © 1965 (renewed) Irving Music, Inc. (BMI). All rights reserved. Used by permission of Warner Bros. Publications Inc., Miami, FL 33014.
‘Honey Bee’ written by Muddy Waters copyright © 1959, 1984 Watertoons Music (BMI)/Administered by BUG. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Stamp design © 1960 United States Postal Service.
Cover art: “A Beautiful Day” by Travis Somerville
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gifford, Barry, 1946-author.
Title: Southern nights / Barry Gifford.
Description: A Seven Stories Press first edition. | New York : Seven Stories Press, 2019.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018017494| ISBN 9781609808587 (paperback) | ISBN 9781609808594 (ebook)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Literary.
Classification: LCC PS3557.I283 A6 2019 | DDC 813/.54--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018017494
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For
Ray Loriga
contents
Preface
night people
part one
NIGHT PEOPLE
part two
THE SECRET LIFE OF INSECTS
part three
THE BALLAD OF EASY EARL
part four
THE CRIME OF MARBLE LESSON
arise and walk
ARISE
Interlude: The Colporteur
WALK
Coda: The Passion of Hypolite Cortez
baby cat-face
BABY CAT-FACE
Interlude: The Assassin’s Last Letter
MOTHER BIZCO’S TEMPLE OF THE FEW WASHED
PURE BY HER BLOOD
THE LOST SONS OF CASSIOPEIA
Coda: La Culebra
preface
these three novels—Night People, Arise and Walk, and Baby Cat-Face—are not so much a cri de coeur as what Joseph Conrad described in a letter (in French) to Henry James as “la grace miséricordieuse du destin” [“The merciful grace of fate”]. Conrad went on to tell James, “It seems I am trying to tell you a dream.” This is how in retrospect I view the Southern Nights trilogy, a dream, or series of dreams, some bad, some not so bad and even comical, but mostly tragic as related and relieved by way of satire.
I grew up in the 1940s, ’50s and early ’60s both in the Deep South—Key West, Miami and Tampa, Florida, with extended interludes in Jackson, Mississippi, and New Orleans, Louisiana—and in the Far North of the North American continent, Chicago, Illinois. Because of this I was able to experience firsthand the discordant dichotomy that existed—and to some extent still does—in the United States of America, a curious experiment most likely doomed to failure. At the heart of the novels reside the two issues responsible for our denouement: race and fundamentalist religion; but my method does not require beating up the reader to put across a point of view.
When my novels first became popular in Europe, I was pleased; but as the years went by I realized that the critics in those countries (France, especially) were not only intrigued but pleased in turn to satisfy their own judgments by what they decided was my savage criticism of the American landscape, my skewering of a society plagued by racism and all-around intolerance. This was never my intention; I only wanted to record my observations and how the inhabitants talked and let the readers make up their own minds about what it all means. What these foreign critics misunderstood was that despite the often violent behavior and seeming insanity or too obvious depravity depicted in the novels, there also existed—and exists—beauty, generosity, genuine tenderness and heroic effort in the face of madness. Real life as it’s played out everywhere on the planet.
I was after accuracy, yes, but also a rather unique albeit somewhat warped form of entertainment—these stories are not dull. I’ve had many great teachers—not in schools, which I mostly did not attend—but those writers, artists, musicians and filmmakers who, though too often misunderstood and/or ignored in their lifetimes, taking their cue from Conrad and others, endeavored to portray in merciful fashion the world as I attempted without prejudice to make sense of it. How, I wonder now, could I have been so naïve?
—BG
September 2018
night people
There’s something wild in the country
that only the night people know . . .
—Tennessee Williams Orpheus Descending
part one
night people
Women are impervious to evil.
—William Faulkner
CONTENTS
Apaches
Conditions
A Generation Removed
Beasts in the Jungle
Judgment
Confluence
Miss Cutie, Her Early Life
Big Betty, How it Happened
Everybody Got Their Own Idea of Home
Bedbugs
The Lair
Waveland, Mississippi
Duke’s Suitcase
The Beast
Snowballs
Pigs
The Book of Becoming
One More for the Road
A Woman’s Touch
Midnight Everywhere
APACHES
big betty stalcup kissed Miss Cutie Early on the right earlobe as Cutie drove, tickling her, causing Cutie to swerve the black Dodge Monaco toward the right as she scratched at that side of her head.
‘Dammit, Bet, you shouldn’t ought do that while I’m wheelin’.’
Big Betty laughed and said, ‘We’re kissin’ cousins, ain’t we? Sometimes just I can’t help myself and don’t want to. Safety first ain’t never been my motto.’
Cutie straightened out the car and grinned. ‘Knowed that for a long time,’ she said.
‘Knowed which? That we was kissin’ cousins?’
‘Uh uh, that come later. About the safe part. You weren’t never very predictable, Bet, even as a child.’
Big Betty and Miss Cutie had spent the week in New Orleans, then the weekend in Gulf Shores, Alabama, and were headed back into Florida at Perdido Key. The Gulf of Mexico was smooth as glass this breezeless, sunny morning in February.
‘Jesus H. Christ, Cutie, tomorrow’s Valentine’s Day!’
‘So?’
‘We’ll have to make somethin’ special happen.’
‘Last Valentine’s we was locked up at Fort Sumatra. Spent the whole day bleachin’ blood and piss stains outta sheets.’
‘Still can’t believe we survived three and change in that pit.’
‘Don’t know if I’d made it without you, Bet. Them big ol’ mamas been usin’ me for toilet paper, you weren’t there to protect me.’
‘You’re my baby black-eyed pea, that’s for sure,’ said Betty. ‘We ain’t never gonna be apart if I can help it.’
‘Suits me.’
‘Cutie, we just a couple Apaches ridin’ wild on the lost highway, the one Hank Williams sung about.’
‘Don’t know that I’ve ever heard of it.’
‘Travelin’ along the way we are, without no home or reason to be or stay anywhere, that’s what it means bein’ on the lost highway. Most folks don’t know what they want, Cutie, only mostly they don’t even know that much. Sometimes they think they know but it’s usually just their stomach or cunt or cock complainin’. They get fed or fucked and it’s back to square one. Money makes ’em meaner’n shit, don’t we already know. Money’s the greatest excuse in the world for doin’ dirt. But you and me can out-ugly the sumbitches, I reckon.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Just by puttin’ two and two together, sweet pea, then subtractin’ off the top, one at a time.’
‘I ain’t sure I understand you, Bet, but I’m willin’ to learn.’
Big Betty threw back her head, shut her wolfslit green eyes and gave out a sharp laugh.
‘Young and willin’s the best time of life,’ she said. ‘You got to play it that way till you can’t play it no more.’
‘Then what?’ asked Cutie.
Big Betty grinned, threw her heavy left arm around Cutie’s narrow shoulders and squeezed closer to her companion.
‘Start cuttin’ your losses,’ she said. ‘All that’s left to do.’
‘Along with cuttin’ throats, you mean.’
‘Why, Miss Cutie, honey, you way ahead of me.’
CONDITIONS
rollo lamar leaned back in his oak swivel chair, lifted the red enamel Hopalong Cassidy cup to his lips and took a sip of Bustelo. He swished the hot black espresso around in his mouth awhile before swallowing it, then looked at Bobbie Dean. If he were a younger man, Rollo thought, he’d go for a slice of this. At sixty-four and counting, though, and six months past his quintuple bypass, Rollo let the notion slither by. He wasn’t even supposed to be drinking coffee, let alone overdoing things with a delectable divorcée-to-be such as Bobbie Dean Baker.
Bobbie Dean had to be all of thirty now, Rollo figured. She’d buried two husbands before she turned twenty-five, and now here she was in his law office asking him to handle her divorce from number three. Bobbie Dean looked spectacular, he had to admit, with her white-blonde hair wrapped up around her head like a motel towel, blue shadow above and below her sparkly aqua eyes, long thin lips spread almost from one side of her face to the other, as if The Maker had begun to carve open her face like a grapefruit but stopped halfway. As Lightnin’ Hopkins used to say, she was built up from the ground like a Coca-Cola bottle. Rollo Lamar lowered the coffee cup and placed it on his desk.
‘I don’t think we’ll have any trouble with this, Bobbie Dean,’ Rollo said. ‘Your husband’s income more than doubled both last year and this. Then there’s Paisley Marie to think of. She’s what, two now?’
‘Be three next week.’
‘Won’t prob’ly need to go to court, don’t think. Leave it to me.’
Bobbie Dean stood up, smiled sweetly at Rollo and let him eyeball her form for a bit.
‘Bobbie Dean, you’d do wonders for a dead man.’
Bobbie Dean laughed. ‘Don’t know about a corpse, Mr. Lamar, but I’d like to think I got somethin’ to do with improvin’ a man’s outlook on life, even temporarily.’
After Bobbie Dean left, Rollo switched on the Admiral AM he’d had since he was a boy.
‘This just out of Alice Springs, Australia,’ said the newsreader. ‘Aborigines attacked policemen with frozen kangaroo tails in a remote Northern Territory town and then ate the evidence, a court was told yesterday.
‘Senior Constable Mark Coffey testified in Alice Springs court that the fifteen Aborigines bought the tails at a local store, then attacked three officers. Coffey said police believe the attack was motivated by an earlier attempt by police to move a man who was sitting in the middle of a highway in an apparent suicide bid. The man refused to move and a fight developed, Coffey said.
‘After the attack on the policemen, six men were arrested and charged with assault. But a police spokesman said the kangaroo tails will not be introduced as evidence because it is believed they were eaten by the Aborigines.’
Dumb shits, thought Rollo. That Abo probably plunked his ass down on the road because it was a sacred spot just happened to’ve been paved over. Damn cops anywhere would rather eliminate the indigenous population than try to understand them and work things out. Could have put a bend in the road there, for instance. All this time and they still ain’t figured out there’s an easier way.
Rollo Lamar picked up his Hoppy cup and drained the Bustelo. He closed his eyes, only dimly aware now of the droning radio. Before he’d gone under the knife, he’d made out his will, leaving virtually all of his assets to the American Heart Association, and provided for his burial, stipulating that the stone be engraved with the last words of Studs Lonigan, ‘Mother, it’s getting dark.’ He thought of this now, and relaxed. A fitting epitaph for the world’s condition, Rollo decided, and dozed off.
A GENERATION REMOVED
the two peruvian seamen, brothers from Callao, Ernesto and Dagoberto Reyes, went straight from the Madrugada, a thirty-thousand-ton container ship registered in Liberia and berthed for eighteen hours at the Esplanade dock, to the Saturn Bar on the corner of St Claude and Clouet in the Ninth Ward. Since Encanta’s Tijuana, their former primary New Orleans hangout, had closed down two years before, the Reyes boys had frequented the Saturn—pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable by the locals—whenever they hit town. It was a lively, though sometimes deadly little place, where the brothers could drink, dance with an assortment of neighborhood doxies and slumming college girls, shoot some pool and otherwise entertain themselves before heading back out to sea. This trip, the Madrugada’ s next port of call was Port of Spain, Trinidad, a place neither Ernesto nor Dagoberto cared much for, which is perhaps why they drank too many Abitas with Jim Beam chasers at the Saturn.
The two women they left with, the bartender, Bosco Brouillard, later told police, were strangers to him. One was large, Bosco said, about five-eight and heavy, even muscular, buxom, maybe in her late thirties. The other was small, just over five feet, boyish, pigeon-chested, a lot younger.
‘Them ladies moved over those guys like Hypnos and Thanatos,’ said Bosco.
‘Who’re they?’ asked the cop, who had discovered the butch-ered bodies of the Reyes brothers behind Swindle Ironworks on Burgundy over in the Eighth Ward.
‘Sleep and Death,’ Bosco told him, ‘twin children of Nyx. You know, Night.’
‘No, I don’t know,’ said the cop, who had not slept since he’d seen the pair of brown Peruvian heads hollowed out like cantaloupes scooped clean at a Cajun picnic.
‘Gals had ’em covered, okay.’
‘Anyone else leave with them?’
The bartender shook his bald head no.
‘Could be Morpheus was waitin’ outside, though,
’ Bosco said. ‘He’s usually not far away.’
‘Who’s this Morpheus?’
‘The god of dreams, Nyx’s sidekick. Say, you law-enforcement types ain’t ’xactly up on your mythology, are ya?’
‘Not really.’
‘Then I don’t guess you know somethin’ else is important.’
The cop looked at the bartender, who was grinning now. The four television sets above the bar, each tuned to a different station with the sound off, flickered above his clean head.
‘What’s that?’ the cop asked.
‘Sleep, Dream and Death, they all only one generation removed from Chaos.’
The policeman, whose name was Vernon Duke Douglas, and who was a direct descendant of H. Kyd Douglas, author of the book I Rode with Stonewall, folded his notepad and put it away.
‘Obliged, Mr Brouillard. We’ll be around again, I’m certain.’
Bosco winked his weak-lidded left eye at the Confederate scribe’s great-great-great-nephew, and said, ‘Sir, I ain’t no kind of travelin’ man.’
BEASTS IN THE JUNGLE
big betty and Cutie were lying on the double bed in their room in Jim & Jesse’s Birth of a Nation Motel at Alligator Point Jaguar, a Sabu movie made in 1956, was on the TV.
‘This don’t actually make whole bunches of sense,’ said Cutie, who lay on her stomach with her head at the foot of the bed. Her legs were bent at the knees and her feet twitched around each other.
‘How’s that, hon?’ Big Betty asked. She was tired from driving all day, and had her eyes closed and her back and head propped up against two pillows next to the headboard.
‘See, there’s this ol’ tribe of jaguar men lurkin’ around and terrorizin’ these oilfield workers in South America, right?’
‘Yeah, so?’
‘Then there’s the young guy, Sabu, who left the tribe when he was a baby, and now the oilfield foreman is tryin’ to trick him into thinkin’ he—Sabu, I mean—is really revertin’ to his natural self by gettin’ into a kind of trance and then clawin’ all these guys, but it’s really the foreman in a jaguar suit who’s doin’ it.’