Airtight Willie & Me (24 page)

I knew right away that there was still lots of warm sweet voltage between us. Two days later I moved from Mama and the tenement flat where I had spent most of my life.

I hadn't dated a guy since I moved into the funeral home with her. I put off marrying her because I knew that freakish creature I called Sally was still alive inside me. I was afraid of Sally. I couldn't marry Dorcas until I was certain that the bitch Sally was dead.

I thought about the freshly embalmed corpse
of Deacon Davis lying in the mortuary morgue downstairs. I would have to groom and dress it by mid-morning for viewing in the slumber room. I tried until dawn to sleep. But it was no use. I couldn't get the corpse of Deacon Davis off my mind. I decided to prepare the Deacon and get him off my mind.

I eased out of bed and slipped on a robe and slippers. I took a ring of keys from the dresser top and went down the front stairway to the street. I went down the sidewalk through the chilly dawn to the front door of the mortuary.

I unlocked the door and stepped into the dim reception room. I walked across the deep pile gold carpet into the office. I switched on a light and sat down at the old mahogany desk. I took a fresh fifth of gin from a drawer and sipped it half empty.

The shrill blast of the desk phone startled me. I picked up and said, “Reed's Funeral Home.”

Mama's high pitched, rapid voice chattered over the wire, “Sweet Pea, it's been over a week since you visited or called me. You know I have a bad heart and I'm all alone. Don't let that woman make you neglect your Mama. Think about it and let your conscience be your judge.”

Before I could reply, she hung up. I started to call her back, but decided against it. I took two more belts of gin and went through the darkened chapel on my way to the morgue at the rear of the building.

The heavy odor of spoiling flowers and the harsh chemical stench of preserved death burst from the slumber room. I walked into its shadowy blueness and paused beside a cheap chalky casket with a bouquet of stale blossoms laying on the foot of it. There was a poignant message scrawled on a smudgy card: “Happy journey, Papa, to the arms of sweet Jesus. See you soon. Lettie, your loving, lonesome wife.”

I stared down at the tired dead face, creased hideous by the lifetime terror and torture of its blackness. I remembered the puckered emblems of hate on the corpse's back.

I turned away from the pitiful corpse wrapped in the shabby suit. I walked unsteadily down the long murky hallway to the morgue.
I opened the raspy door. There he was, a skeletal black blob on the porcelain table that gleamed whitely in the half darkness.

I walked across the room and the scraping of my feet against the concrete floor was like shrieking in the tomb quiet. I flipped on the high intensity lamp over the table. I slipped on rubber gloves and stood hypnotized, sweeping my eyes up and down the white haired wasted corpse.

I shook with rage as scenes and sounds of the awful past shattered and filled the bright stillness. I was nine years old when the corpse everybody respectfully called Deacon Davis lived on the third floor of the Westside tenement where Mama still lives.

I remembered that first time in his apartment. His hand was hot between my legs, caressing the throbbing tip of my stiff little organ.

His voice was hoarse with excitement, “Kiss mine and lick it, you dear little boy, like I did to yours. Mine is a magic wand to make any wish come true when you make it cry tears of joy.”

I put the long crooked thing in my mouth until I spat its slimy tears. I cheated the wand and made two wishes: That poor Papa found a steady job. And that Mama wouldn't be so bossy and cruel to Papa anymore.

To my complaints of wishes unfulfilled, the Deacon would grin and say, “I know what's wrong. My wand must cry deep in your hunger, my dear boy.”

For more than a year, until he moved away, the Deacon shoved his wand deeply into me. The Deacon sure ruined me. He really did.

I leaned over the corpse and roughly jabbed my thumbs into the sunken eye sockets. I pushed back the withered eyelids and stared into the brown orbs filmy and vacant.

I whispered, “Dear Deacon Davis, you can't know how thrilled I am to see you again. I just don't want you to go to your grave unpunished. You bastard child-raping freak. I'm going to shave you and dress your nappy hair. Then I'm going to punish you for ruining me. But no one will know except you and me, dear Deacon Davis.”

I groomed the corpse and got a razor-sharp scalpel. I lifted his wrinkled shaft and held it erect at its tip between a thumb and index finger. I stood there with the glittering blade in my hand.

I glanced at the Deacon's face. The blank sable eyes were staring at me. I felt suddenly queasy and faint. The scalpel clattered to the table top. I jerked my hand away from the shaft and pressed the eyelids down. I just couldn't do a vicious thing like that even to a filthy freak like Deacon Davis.

I was putting underwear on the corpse when it groaned as trapped air escaped its chest. I went to the office in a hurry for a stiff drink of gin. I came back to the morgue and split the burial suit coat and shirt down the back and dressed the body.

I wheeled the white satin-lined casket to the side of the table. I attached pulleys over the table to the corpse and lowered it into the casket. I wheeled it into the slumber room for viewing by mourners who believed the Deacon was holy.

Funeral services for Deacon Davis were held two days later. The anguished wails of his surviving brother and sister moved me not at all.

I drove the hearse to the cemetery. Two elegant black limousines driven by chauffeurs Dorcas hired at a ten dollar fee followed behind me. At least thirty private cars behind them crawled through the dazzling sunshine to the grave. The Deacon was well thought of all right. But then I'm sure that the mourners didn't know about his dirty passion for little boys.

A nice funeral like that was much more than the Deacon deserved. But I was really glad I hadn't used that scalpel on the Deacon. I've always, at least in one respect tried to be like my idol, Martin Luther King, Jr. To not hate anybody.

To tell the truth, I've never really hated a living human soul except cops. There may be cops who are human, but I've never known any.

The day after the Deacon's funeral I called Mama more than a dozen times. I didn't get an answer and the line was never busy. I was
awfully worried, so that evening around seven I killed the fifth of gin and drove my old Plymouth to the Westside.

I drove past raucous clusters of ragged kids frolicking on the sidewalks and stoops in the twilight-down Homan Avenue past 1321, the six flat slum building that my idol and his group had taken over in February, 1966. The plan had been (in violation of the law) to collect the rents and spend the money to make the building fit for human occupancy.

I parked at the curb at the end of the block. A gorgeous black brute striding down the sidewalk toward me mesmerized me. The bulgy thigh muscles undulated against his tight white trousers. I forgot all my resolutions to keep Sally shackled and scrambled to the sidewalk and stood fumbling with my key ring.

His raw body odor spiced with the scent of shaving lotion floated deliriously on the warm air. I inhaled hungrily. I was flaming. I really was. He came abreast of me and I saw the imprint of his huge dick. I was dizzy with a hot roaring in my head. I almost fainted with excitement. I really did.

I had an insane urge to stroke his thing. Instead I caressed my eyes over his crotch and then waltzed them to the depths of his dreamy brown eyes, searching for a flicker of sweet kinship for “the” secret message. I saw only a cold quizzical indifference as he passed me. The beautiful bastard was straight!

Almost instantly I felt like shouting with joy and relief that he was, and that the bitch, Sally, had been denied. I went down the cracked walk toward the grimy familiar front of the six unit building that Mama now owned.

I glanced at Mama's front window on the first floor. I saw the curtains flutter above a red and white sign, “Madame Miracle—Come In—Get the Golden Touch Blessing—Win and Hold Money and Friends—Discover How To Punish Your Enemies —Ward Off Evil Spirits—Enslave Sweethearts-Wives—Husbands—I am blessed with infinite wisdom and power.”

I went past several cursing pre-teeners shooting penny craps on the stoop. I opened the front door and stepped into the building's musty vestibule.

A bandy legged old man in faded blue under-shorts was piling his ancient pocket watch wallet and small change on the rumpled heap of his puke stained trousers and shirt laying on the floor.

I paused beside him. I heard the door open leading to the first floor hallway. A tall elderly woman with a fierce face was standing with arms folded across her chest glaring down at the muttering old man.

She screamed in a shrill voice, “Nigger, this ain't our apartment. This is the vestibule. You drunk sonuvabitch. Pick up your filthy rags and get your black simple ass upstairs before I knock the shit outta' you.”

The old man blinked his sad eyes like a frightened puppy and mutely worked his thick lips. I felt a sharp pulsing of sorrow and anger looking at his eyes. They were whipped, hopeless, pitiful eyes, so much like poor Papa's before he crawled off to die.

I went up the short stone stairway past the husky hag and opened the splintered glassed door. I walked scabrous tile to Mama's door. I put my key in the lock and stepped inside. It was very dark except for cloudy rays of the street lamp that filtered through the living room curtains.

I said loudly, “Mama, it's Sweet Pea. Mama, are you here?”

There was no answer. I went down the hallway toward Mama's bedroom at the rear of the apartment. I thought about Mama's heart condition that was all in her mind. Her doctor had told me confidentially there was no organic trouble at all, just that Mama had deep mental needs for her attacks.

Then I remembered the movement of the curtains when I came up the front walk. I shivered. Mama had made enemies with her witchcraft. I wondered if she was dead and the murderer was still in the apartment. I stopped and stood uneasily at Mama's bedroom door, listening to the wild pumping of my heart.

I shouted, “Mama, are you here?”

No answer. The feeling was overpowering that something ghastly had happened to her. I almost knew somebody was behind that door. Perhaps the murderer was crimson with Mama's blood, panting, trapped, waiting for me with a butcher knife or hatchet in the dark in the other side of that door.

I decided to go back to the car. I turned and walked quickly back toward the front door. Then I glanced at the murky mirror on the wall next to the front door.

I froze. My legs wouldn't move any more. There was a kind of wavering shifting movement in the blackness behind me near Mama's bedroom. I almost tinkled on myself as I stared in the mirror and saw a mass of the blackness split off and glide toward me.

I spun around and faced the thing. I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out. The thing came closer and giggled. Then I saw a slash of white in a familiar black face. It was Mama in a long black robe smiling at me. I started crying in relief.

I blubbered, “Mama darling, why did you do that to me? Why didn't you answer when I called to you? OH! Mama, I thought something bad had happened to you.”

Mama held her long arms open and crooned in her racing voice, “Come here and kiss me and tell me you love me. Mama didn't want to frighten her pretty baby, but I've been mad with you for neglecting me. Come on, Sweet Pea. Come to your Mama.”

I felt a tremor of rage, not toward Mama really, but just for those spidery arms reaching out for me. In my anger I got the weirdest thoughts standing there. A lot like the terrible thoughts I used to get when I helped Mama with the dishes.

I'd have to lock my trembling hands together so I couldn't obey the terrifying impulse to stab a kitchen knife into her. It was awful because I love Mama and always will. But standing there in that hallway I thought how funny Mama would look without those arms. And what if I had found her not dead but with those clutching
creatures chopped off cleanly with no pain, no blood, just open-mouthed surprise to see herself without them.

Then suddenly I was sorry for my mean thoughts. I rushed to her arms and buried my face in her bosom. She crushed me to her so hard I could hardly breathe. I raised my head and kissed her lips.

I sobbed, “Mama, I've missed you. I love you so much.”

We stood there hugging and kissing like we hadn't seen each other in years. Mama led me into the living room and switched on a brass cherub lamp on a table at the end of the white sofa.

We sat on it close together. Mama scanned my face with bright black eyes. They were tiny unblinking eyes that I could never look into for long. When she was upset or angry they seemed to glow balefully.

But her eyes were warm and kind when she gently placed her hand on my thigh and said softly, “Sweet Pea, I see you and I just can't understand how we could live apart for a whole year. How do we stand it, precious?”

I didn't answer. I looked at her thinking how she'd changed; she'd been good looking and shapely down South. She'd even lost her thick southern accent with hard study and desire.

I moved my thigh away and said, “Now Mama, please don't start. It's not like I'm living out of town. I'm never going to stop calling you and visiting you. Think back, Mama, and remember what happened to Frank, Carol and Bessie. It makes me want to bawl to think about them.

“Mama, I'm the only kid you got left. I'm forty years old and this is my big chance to stand on my own and be a man. Try to understand. Help me, Mama. Only you know what I've gone through.”

The warmness deserted her eyes. A toil coarsened hand thoughtfully pulled at the tip of her wide flat nose. I sat there on the edge of the sofa, waiting for her to speak, afraid that I had said the wrong thing. I'd always tried very hard not to displease her. I suffered when I did.