Doom Fox (7 page)

He grunts. 'You're telling me. I paid the bill. Look baby, please, for me and your own dignity, don't wear that thing to church. Your mother's dresses wear lousy on you.'

'I'm wearing it later. Melvin is taking me to a late afternoon cocktail party in Hollywood. This dress will be great. Okay Daddy bunny?'

His brows hedgerow, 'Girl, I don't want you to wear it, none of Phillipa's things any time, anywhere. Is that clear!?'

Her eyes slit and chill. 'Baptiste, you can't dictate to a woman with child and a husband on the turn what she can wear. Is that clear!?'

She turns back to whir the machine. He lights a cigarette and stares at the yellow daisy appliqued black chiffon dress draped on the machine. He tries to recall why he despises this particular dress so much.

He mumbles to her back, 'Reba, I meant what I said. You can't wear that dress!'

She chants in sync, with the beehive hum of the machine like an impudent child, 'I can, I can, I can, I will, I will, I will' as she completes the alteration. She stands, pulls the dress on over her slip. She smiles wickedly as she looks at herself in a wall mirror.

He glances at her reflection, suddenly remembers that Phillipa wore it the night of a midnight cruise: Suspicious of her long absence, he left a dancing partner to search for her. He caught a young chef humping her in a galley pantry. He remembers he lunged to attack them with a cleaver. He was restrained and manhandled by crewmen, then locked up until the ship docked at dawn. She got home the next midnight. He flinches to remember how they fought and screamed at each other.

His stare is poisonous as he sees Phillipa's mint image in the mirror. Out of control, he snarls, 'Reba, you're not wearing that Goddamn nymphomaniac bitch dog's dress!'

She whirls. 'Baptiste, are you drunk or just gone nuts!? I'm wearing my mother's dress,' she says with bared teeth.

He screams, 'The hell you will!' as he seizes the plunging bodice and rips the dress off her, tears it into ribbons.

She flails her fists against his face and chest as she shrieks, 'I hate you Baptiste! I hate you!'

He flings the shredded dress aside at the sound of the doorbell. He ducks the barrage of her tiny fists into the hallway. She skims his hair with a flower pot before she slams the door behind him.

He pauses to compose himself for a long moment before he goes to the front door. He takes his special card mark reading glasses from his robe pocket, slips them on. He opens the door to admit his dapper poker guests with a shark smile.

He pumps the hands of the portly trio as they enter. An alien, lean, fox-faced figure looms in the doorway as he is closing the door. Baptiste's head roars as he tries to place the vaguely familiar stranger's face. Could he be a fellow shark he'd met on one of his cross-country swindle junkets? Or even a member of the gaping crowd the night his throat was slashed by the San Francisco sucker? Baptiste's gluey hand shakes the stranger's hand, then closes the door.

Cabaret owner, Dudley says, 'Bap, meet my nephew, Clarence Jones, owns a poolroom up North.'

The group seat themselves on chairs and couch. Baptiste stands, avoids the inscrutable stare of Clarence's deep set maroon eyes as he asks 'Gentlemen, how about refreshments before we put our bankrolls in competition?'

Lefty Hicks, Draw Back Davis and Dudley request coffee. Dudley's nephew, ice water, Baptiste thinks, to match his fucking eyes, as he leaves for the kitchen.

When Baptiste returns to place the refreshment tray on the cocktail table before them, Draw Back says, 'You got fresh decks, Bap?'

Baptiste says, 'No, we need some. Maybe the drugstore on the corner is open.' He leans to dial the phone on the table top. He hears Erica answer, says, 'Madame, you got Bee decks in stock?'

She says, 'I miss you, Da Dee. Good luck.'

Baptiste says, 'You have? Thank you Ma'am.' He replaces the receiver, says 'Gentlemen, I'll slip on some slacks and make that run to get the cards.'

Clarence rises, says 'Bap, don't go to that trouble. I'll make the run.'

Baptiste enjoys an interior guffaw as he reaches into his robe pocket to take out his two grand blood money boodle of fins and sawbucks thinly wrapped in 'C' notes and a fifty.

He gives Clarence the fifty, says 'A half-dozen decks will get us started.'

Clarence goes through the front door. Baptiste sits on the couch, reaches a pawn shop denuded hand to get coffee.

Lefty Hicks snickers, 'Bap, you get lifted for your rocks?'

Baptiste laughs, 'Yeah Lefty, I lifted them myself last night to start some painting upstairs.'

Baptiste initiates pre-action chit-chat. 'Gentlemen, it's a pleasure beyond your imagination, to have your company this morning.'

Across the street, Zenobia is seated on the horsehair sofa with her bare feet in Junior Joe's lap. He is in pajamas. She is made up and in her Sunday lace trimmed pink slip intently watching him razor blade off Epsom Salts water softened corns to give her an unhobbled gait for church.

Upstairs, Senior Joe writhes in nightmared sleep. Chain gang horror images and sounds stomp his psyche. He sees again the power-maddened white convict trusties on horses riding shotgun on the crew of convicts leveling and chopping away brush from the narrow dirt road for widening and paving.

He hears the profane admonitions of the trusties to laggard convicts: 'Awright Mammy-fuckahs, shake yuh lazy Niggah asses' as they lash puffs of dust from the striped shirted backs of the offenders.

He sees the trio of guards crouched in tree shaded points of vantage with leashed bloodhounds and cradled carbines. He sees himself, the water boy, stop along the line when he sees the truck bringing the noon lunch of fatback and black-eyed peas, pull to a stop beside him.

He hears himself shout, 'Got to let 'em down, Captain' to the wrinkled, leather skinned redneck on a knoll above him, who shouts back permission to defecate. 'Awright boy, let 'em down.'

He hears again the stentorian voice of the Captain yell, 'Awright yuh bastids, line up single file for eats.'

He sees himself go across the road just far enough into bushes so that his chest is visible. He squats, strips off his shirt, hangs it stretched out on brambles. The instant the Captain's eyes stray to the convicts lining up, he dashes fifty yards to a river, plunges in. He swims a hundred yards down stream to the rear of the crew.

He hears the distant muffled voice of the Captain shout, 'Awright Joe Henry, wipe yuh black ass' when he emerges from the river.

He goes to watch a truck from a stand of trees at the edge of a slight bend in the cleared and leveled road. He sees the cleanup squad of convicts, the guard and black trusty driver of the brush-loaded truck march around the bend toward the main crew. He leaves cover, worms himself beneath the mountain of brush on the truck bed. Minutes later, he lies in the stifling darkness listening to the hounds' banshee howls of frustration in the forest beyond the river.

After what seems like eons, he hears the driver start the truck, back it up, turn around and go toward a ravine to dump the load several miles away. He sees himself leap from the truck and roll into brush near railroad tracks. He sees himself hiding there with a thunderous heart until nightfall when he hops a freight train bound for Macon, Georgia and young Zenobia's sharecropper shack on the outskirts of the city.

And now a nightstand alarm clock bombs him awake. He jerks rigid from a fetal ball of trauma. The clock nearly slips from his sweat-greased hands as he picks it up to silence its din. As always when he awakens, he thinks of Marguerite Spingarn, remembers they have a late afternoon movie date.

I've got to stop seeing her for awhile, maybe even break off completely with her. She's too risky with Zen suspicious, he tells himself. He rises, goes to the bathroom across the hall. Diarrhea keeps him on the stool for long moments before he brushes his teeth and showers.

He returns to the bedroom and compulsively goes to the closet, removes from a boot toe a night club shot of himself with Marguerite. His hand is tremulous as he gazes at it. He groans, I have to see her today. I can't do without her.

He takes from the closet a freshly cleaned plaid suit of moss green, tan silk shirt, green silk tie and a pair of tan Stetson shoes. He dresses himself. Then he slips on plumbing boots and coveralls, buttoned to his Adam's Apple, over his natty outfit. He goes to the living room.

On his way to the kitchen, he pauses at the sofa to peck Zenobia's forehead and say, 'Good morning.' Junior says, 'Morning Pops.'

Zenobia grunts. She says, 'If you wait a while, you can drop me off at church.'

He says, 'Now Zen, if I do that I'll be late on the job at the factory I told you about.'

She stiff arms his belly. 'G'wan Mister Midnight Creeper, I'd rather go in a classy Packard then in a funky plumbing truck anyways.'

He goes to the kitchen, gulps down a glass of orange juice. He pecks Zenobia's forehead on his way to the front door.

As they watch Senior Joe drive away, Junior says, 'Mama, you look tired. You oughta take my nest egg in the bank like I been begging you, use it to let you loose from killing yourself for the white folks.'

She says, 'Hush up Lil Joe. You gonna need that money and more'n that to marry and start a family, soon I hope.' He is about to tell her about Delphine when she says, 'Don't court no pretty grief givers. Best to court a ugly chile 'cause she's maybe gonna sho 'nuff love you. Pretty peoples oughta hitch up with pretty peoples ... you sure ain't ugly, you 'tractive in your way. But chile, you sure ain't Mister Valentino. And another thing, you got to quit that ring fightin' and get a solid job ... why don't you go to church with me? The Lord might show you a wife.'

Terminal pain screws up his face, 'Mama, please don't ask me. Them niggers shouting and talking in them spooky tongues gives me the heebie jeebies, and the hives. Remember?'

He narrowly escapes his kneecap from the kick of her foot heel. 'Hush up and call your play sister. Tell her, her play mama wants to ride to church with her.'

'Aw Mama! We on the outs. I don't wanta talk to her. I'll dial and you talk to her' he says as he takes the phone off the end table behind him to place in her lap. She leans, hugs, kisses him.

He dials, then hands her the receiver. He goes to the vacant two bedroom rental house in the rear. He punches a light bag on the service porch converted to a mini gym. Then he goes to plop down across a bed in one of the bedrooms to fantasize, for the dozenth time, about his sexual romp with Delphine. He is catnapping when he awakens to soft lips on his cheek. He stares up at Reba aglow in her choir robe.

She says, 'Hi Bro, I hope you're not still mad with me.'

Swooned by her perfumed presence and moonlit voice, he stammers, 'Naw ... uh I ain't mad ... uh wasn't in the first place with you, but with Melvin and his cousin that teed me off way back in the ring.'

She leans and kisses his hops, says 'Bye, bye.'

Through a haze of excitement he sees her leave the room. He leaps from the bed, goes to the front house living room. He stands at a front window and watches Reba drive Zenobia, gussied up in black taffeta, away to church. His head is chaotic as it struggles to unravel the riddle of his flaming love for two women at the same time.

Within fifteen minutes, Reba drives into the car clogged church parking lot. Immediately that she parks, the child prodigy preacher, Reverend Felix Junior, leaves a knot of members on the church steps. A breeze whips his flowing black satin robe on his greyhound frame as he hurries to the Packard with a radiant smile on his breathtakingly attractive peach hued face. His Persian Cat eyes are afire with precocious passion.

He warmly embraces Reba and Zenobia emerging from the car. 'Good morning, Ladies, good morning' he says in a voice surprisingly rich in timbre for a ten year old.

They chorus, 'Good morning Reverend Felix.'

'Father, thank the Lord, is well enough today to preach his first sermon since his stroke three months ago. Praise the Lord!' the Reverend exclaims as he escorts the women toward the church.

Zenobia breaks off to go toward the front door of the church as the Reverend and Reba enter a rear door leading to the pulpit and choir section behind it.

As they go down a hallway, the Reverend embraces Reba's waist and squeezes her close. 'I missed you so much since last Sunday, Sister Reba ... too bad services can't be held every day so I could see you' he says petulantly.

'Reverend Felix, that's very flattering for a pregnant, soon-to-be-married woman to hear, especially from a handsome gentleman half her age.'

His rosebud lips pout irritation. 'Please, Sister Reba, call me just Felix when we're alone, if you don't mind.'

She says, 'I don't mind a bit Felix' as he opens the door into the packed church.

He goes to sit, dwarfed in an ornately carved high backed chair behind the pulpit beside his septuagenarian father. Reba takes her first row seat with the choir behind the pulpit.

A scarecrow deacon, in shiny black suit and high, starched yellowed white collar, comes behind the pulpit to welcome the congregation and to announce the singing of the hymn 'Rock of Ages' by the risen choir. An elephantine woman organist accompanies the choir's spirited rendition of the hymn to the rapt thousand souls.

The Elder Felix is presented by the deacon to cacophonous applause by the brightly feathered congregation. He feebly rises and takes his position behind the pulpit. A wizened, destroyed yellow leprechaun of a man.

His sermon on the awesome risks of not requiting God's love and the shirking of one's obligation to contribute hurtfully to the Lord's work, the church, is sufficiently impassioned to produce the usual quota of shouters and talkers in tongues. And a collection bonanza.

After services, Saul Sternberg chats briefly on the parking lot with Reba and Zenobia among many others.

As Reba is driving down Avalon Boulevard past a used car lot two blocks from the Rambeau and Allen homes, Zenobia says 'Chile, it sure is a beautiful day. Let me out. Think I'll hike home to pump some blood.'